Thin, Rich, Pretty

by Harbison, Beth

  Holly’s brow twitched downward. “Fine. I’ll go.”

  “To the dance?”

  “No way!” It was a heated response for one so “weakened” by illness. “To the infirmary.”

  Disappointment tickled at Nicola’s hopes, but not surprise. “I’ll walk you there.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll go by myself. You need to get ready.” Holly pushed off the bed and made the awkward trip down the ladder, and for the first time, Nicola wondered if maybe she really was sick, because ordinarily she never would have given Lexi, Sylvia, and Tami such a golden opportunity to mock her.

  “Look out!” Sylvia cried, crossing her arms in front of her face. “If she falls, it’s all over for us.”

  The other girls laughed—of course—and Lexi added, “Maybe you shouldn’t be hoarding all that candy, Holly. If you shared every once in a while, you might not be so big.”

  “I do share.” Holly, red-faced, tugged at the wedgie her shorts had given her on the way down. “Just not with bitches like you!”

  Nicola gasped inwardly.

  Holly had called them bitches!

  Right to their faces!

  It was shocking. Kind of cool, of course, but shocking.

  If Brittany had heard her say it, she would have sent Holly straight to Mr. Frank’s office.

  In fact, Nicola often thought Brittany would take any opportunity to get rid of Holly and Nicola because she thought they were fat and ugly and it embarrassed her to have them in her cabin. Truth was, Nicola suspected Brittany thought Danny Parish wouldn’t look at her because her campers weren’t pretty enough.

  Brittany was probably like that because of her own insecurities, but that didn’t make Nicola feel sorry for her one bit. Nicola had plenty of her own insecurities—with this nose, how could she not?—but it didn’t make her act like a jerk to other people and try to hurt their feelings in order to boost herself up.

  Even a thirteen-year-old like Nicola could see what a stupid plan that was.

  But a seventeen-year-old like Brittany would probably never see it. She hadn’t been in with the popular group when she was a kid, probably, and now she had the chance to be in with Lexi and company, so even though they were only thirteen, it was better than nothing.

  The screen door squealed on its hinges and banged thinly against the doorframe, like a screaming guitar lick to Holly’s heavy, percussive steps across the front porch and down the wood steps into the thick, buggy night.

  Apparently Nicola was the only one who cared that she was gone.

  “. . . so look what I got from my Stepmother Dearest,” Lexi was saying to the other two as she unzipped the pocket of her suitcase. Her cheeks were a pretty Maybelline pink with a light sheen of gold powder under her eyes.

  She looked almost angelic.

  She pulled a gleaming ring with the biggest diamond Nicola had ever seen in her life. It was like a golf ball.

  Even Sylvia and Tami gasped.

  “She gave it to you?” Tami asked in disbelief, blinking muted mauve eyelids and echoing Nicola’s thoughts and perhaps a smidgen of her skepticism.

  Nicola noticed then that she had the ring on a gold chain. Lexi slid the ring, chain and all, onto her finger and said, “Of course not. I took it. She’ll kill me if she finds out.” She held her hand up to the light. “But, of course, she’ll never find out. She’ll just think it was one of the maids or something.”

  What if a maid gets blamed and fired? Nicola wanted to know. But she wasn’t about to have that argument with these three. She knew where they would stand on the matter, and it wasn’t the same place she stood. So she pushed her concerns about it aside and tried to keep up with the conversation without anyone noticing.

  The ring was amazing. The diamond was just huge. It was probably worth a million dollars. Nicola’s father owned an insurance company, and she’d heard him talk many times about the value of the jewelry people were insuring.

  “It’s supposed to be mine someday, anyway,” Lexi said, absently fingering the chain. “It was my mother’s.”

  The light in the cabin wasn’t great, but from where Nicola sat on the top bunk, she thought Lexi’s expression tightened for a moment.

  “Then you should totally keep it,” Sylvia said, crossing her arms in front of her. “It’s yours anyway.”

  “To-tally,” Tami rang in agreement.

  Lexi looked uneasy. She glanced up, and Nicola looked away quickly, hoping she wasn’t going to get yelled at. She felt like she’d been eavesdropping on bank robbers and would be in huge trouble if she were caught.

  But instead, Lexi said, “Hey. Nicky.”

  Nicola didn’t correct her, even though no one called her that. “Hm?”

  “Are you going to the dance?”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t sound half as casual as she was trying to. “Yes.”

  “We’re doing makeup if you want.”

  Nicola couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “If I want what?” she asked, trying to sound neutral instead of both hopeful and skeptical.

  “If you want to put some on,” Lexi said. “Duh.”

  “Oh.” Nicola propped herself up on her elbows. “Really? Your makeup?”

  Lexi made another duh face and said, “Um, unless you brought some?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Nicola said eagerly.

  Too eagerly.

  The girls exchanged a look that said it was obvious Nicola hadn’t brought makeup.

  “Cool.” Lexi turned and flounced back to the spot on the floor where they’d laid out all the little compacts, containers, pencils, and so forth and sat down, patting the floor next to her. “You sit here, and we’ll do your makeup for you.”

  “We’ll what?” Sylvia snarked.

  Lexi flashed her a silencing look. “It’s always better if you have someone else do it. We can see better in here.”

  Nicola thought to herself that maybe Lexi wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe she and Holly had given her a bad rap unfairly.

  “Okay, so put your hair back in this.” Lexi held out a ponytail band and waited while Nicola put her hair into a quick braid. Ever since she’d seen Little House on the Prairie she’d preferred braids to ponytails, and she’d gotten quick at doing them.

  Lexi shook a bottle of base and poured it onto a little triangular sponge. She dabbed it on Nicola’s cheek, then moved back and narrowed her eyes.

  “It’s the perfect color for you,” she pronounced.

  Nicola felt her face flush with pleasure and hoped it didn’t ruin the perfect match.

  “So.” Lexi swabbed the sponge across Nicola’s nose without making even one snide comment. “What’s the deal with you and Fatso?”

  The right response would have been something along the lines of Who is Fatso? but Nicola knew exactly who Lexi was talking about, and everyone in the room knew it.

  “What do you mean? There’s no deal.”

  “Um, you guys seem totally, like, close—and I just don’t get why.” Lexi screwed the lid back on the bottle and picked up a square black compact, opened it, held it up to Nicola’s cheek, nodded, and took out a fluffy blush brush. “I mean, you’re so cool and she’s so, you know.”

  “Fat and stupid and boring,” Tami offered.

  Lexi shrugged, but it was a gesture of agreement.

  “Well . . .” Nicola knew she should defend her friend. Worse, she knew that, if the shoe were on the other foot, Holly would defend her. But something about the way Lexi was brushing the blush across her cheeks, the hypnotizing feel of the feathery bristles gliding across her skin, lulled her onto the easier path of betraying her friend. “We’re just . . .”

  For a long time after, she hated herself for what she said next.

  “. . . bunkmates. It’s not like we knew each other before we came here or anything.”

  Lexi smiled.

  It was distinctly triumphant. Subtle but triumphant.

  That was something else Nicola would
remember for a long time to come. “That’s what I thought. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Guilt rose like bile in Nicola’s throat. “But I like her,” she hastened to add, wishing she’d defended Holly—wishing, at the very least, she’d said nothing.

  But she couldn’t take back her words. It was like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.

  “Hm?” Lexi paused, her brush halfway across Nicola’s right eyelid, forcing a wink Nicola did not mean to give.

  “I don’t really understand what you have against her,” Nicola said, trying to walk the fence.

  Lexi shot a look over Nicola’s head and said, “You don’t? Seriously?”

  Nicola scrambled for an answer. She was on the verge of joining the popular girls for the first—and maybe only—time in her life. It was like someone was holding a golden ticket out to her and she was shoving her hands into her pockets and asking for a better deal.

  It was insane.

  “I—” The pause between that one word and all the words that should have followed seemed endless. “Can you just tell me?” she asked, like she was on Lexi’s side and just wanted to help her. “What’s your problem with her?”

  “She’s selfish, she’s mean”—Lexi resumed her work on Nicola’s eye shadow, but her touch was a little heavier now—“and she totally doesn’t belong here. Camp Catoctin is for serious athletes.”

  “Oh.” Nicola had never heard that. She glanced down at her lap, at her ordinary thighs and nonmuscular arms. “Really?”

  “Mm-hm.” Lexi nodded authoritatively. “You know, girls like us.”

  “But . . . we don’t really do a lot of sports here.” All they did was some boating and swimming. But it was every day. “I mean, she’s here for the art. She’s a really good artist.”

  Lexi stopped. “Are you defending stupid Holly? After what she said about you?”

  Nicola’s face went hot again. “What did she say about me?”

  She braced herself for some terrible truth she hadn’t seen coming. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d trusted someone she shouldn’t have.

  When would she learn?

  “What did she say?” she asked again, hoping her voice didn’t betray the nervous pounding of her heart or the way her stomach had lurched into her chest.

  Lexi pressed her lips together. “Nothing.”

  It was bad, then.

  Had Holly told everyone something Nicola had confided in secret? Like her dreams about John Stamos? Or the time she got her period during math class and everyone had seen?

  “Tell me!”

  Lexi hesitated, biting down on her lip, then shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  For a long minute, Nicola was torn.

  Had Holly bad-mouthed her?

  Or did she believe it only because she’d been so ready to do the same herself, in the interest of being one of the popular girls?

  “She just said . . . she said you have a big nose and that there was no way you were ever going to be an actress with ‘a honker like that.’ ” Lexi splayed her arms. “I didn’t agree, I’m just saying . . .”

  Hot tears immediately sprang to Nicola’s eyes. This was way worse than the John Stamos or period stories. If there was one thing—and there was—that made her more self-conscious than anything else, it was her nose. It ruined her entire face. It ruined her whole look.

  It was the one thing that she worried might keep her from being a famous actress, and she’d told Holly that!

  They’d talked about it. Holly had said it made her interesting, that famous painters would love to put her image on canvas for all time. Holly had told her she was lucky to have such a “cool look”—and that Nicola would get famous that much faster because she was beautiful without looking like every other girl in Hollywood.

  She’d wanted to believe her. And Holly had said it all with such earnestness. Had she really been so two-faced?

  How could Holly be so convincing talking to her, then turn around and say something so hateful to Lexi? She wasn’t the actress; Nicola was.

  “I don’t believe she said that,” Nicola said.

  Lexi’s eyes widened and her hand drew back. “I’m sorry?”

  There was a moment where Nicola could have backed down—she could have said that what she meant was she just couldn’t believe what a bitch Holly was.

  But Holly was one of the nicest people she’d ever met, and she just couldn’t imagine giving that up and spending the rest of her time at camp—another week and a half—avoiding Holly and feeling weird every night when it was time to sleep on the same bunk.

  Her instincts told her who the liar was.

  And it wasn’t Holly.

  “I don’t believe you,” Nicola said again, with more force. “Holly wouldn’t have said that.”

  Lexi’s eyes darted from Tami to Sylvia, and her voice wasn’t nearly so confident when she said, “Well, I guess I might have misunderstood what she said.”

  “Finish her makeup,” Sylvia said, reaching her hand in front of Lexi.

  Suddenly Sylvia was the boss?

  “You need to blend here”—she rubbed Nicola’s cheek, under her left eye, hard, her nail scratching—“and here.” She did the same on the other side. “We’re going to be late now, thanks to this stupid conversation.”

  Lexi looked like she was stifling tears.

  Tami, on the other hand, sort of looked like she was laughing.

  That was how they were, Nicola concluded. They weren’t even nice to each other. Only to the meanest one.

  “Come on.” Tami grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “Wait, I want to look in the mirror,” Nicola said, reaching for the small hand mirror on the floor.

  “You want to miss the dance?” Tami asked, tightening her grip on Nicola’s wrist.

  “N-no . . .”

  “Then come on,” Lexi said.

  They all ran out the door and through the gravel pathways to the dock, where a group of girls was gathering in the dark. The frogs were loud here, and the dank smell of the lake was strong, particularly in the dark, but Nicola kept her spirits up, reassuring herself that Lexi—who looked fabulous—had done her makeup, so she must look good.

  At least she knew she was wearing her best, most flattering tank top.

  They waited there in the dark, slapping back mosquitoes and rubbing their arms against the increasing chill of the summer night, until finally the covered, utilitarian boat pulled up to take the girls from Camp Catoctin to Echo Lake.

  It felt like a long ride in a big cold metal boat that smelled of old fish and seaweed, but Nicola couldn’t help the trill of excitement that ran through her in anticipation of the night ahead.

  Steve Grudberg would almost certainly be there. He’d been there the past two years.

  And Nicola had just had her makeup done by Lexi Henderson herself!

  They glided across the lake, and Nicola looked out at the dark silhouette of evergreens on the shore, the sky only slightly lighter above and sprinkled with stars. She knew this should be the sort of memory she held on to forever—she’d heard this kind of thing in the old songs her grandparents played at Thanksgiving and Christmas—but all she could think about was Steve Grudberg, and would he notice her?

  It became a mantra for her as they crossed the lake.

  Steve Grudberg.

  Steve Grudberg.

  Please be there, Steve Grudberg.

  By the time they finally arrived at the dock on the opposite side of the lake, Nicola was feeling a bit wilted from the heat and dizzy from concentrating on Steve Grudberg.

  When the boat pilot gave her a second look on her way past him onto the dock, she barely noticed.

  When girls around her on the dock giggled, she didn’t really notice at all. Or at least, she didn’t think it had anything to do with her.

  They went to the large wooden meeting hall. It smelled of woodsy smoke from the fireplace, and
the entire place was lit by low-watt lightbulbs in wall sconces that looked like old-fashioned lanterns.

  To Nicola, it was like something from a fairy tale. The woodsman’s cottage, the place where the prince would come to find Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, and his kiss would bring her to life.

  It was on the heels of that thought that someone in the crowd stepped aside in front of her, and there he was.

  Steve Grudberg.

  She would have known him anywhere—that wavy black hair, those cool blue John Stamos–like eyes with the enviably long dark eyelashes, that jaw with the muscle that twitched when he chewed. He was taller this year, by maybe like four inches, but it only made him look better. His thin frame was wiry and strong. She just knew he was probably the fastest runner at his camp.

  She’d thought about him for a year. Fantasized about his hand touching her face, him bending down to kiss her. She knew just what it would feel like. Her whole body tingled just thinking about it.

  Thoughts of Steve Grudberg had carried her through some of the loneliest nights of junior high. When she wasn’t picked for teams in PE, when her voice cracked during a solo in music, every time she had been ostracized, laughed at, or otherwise demoralized, she had gone home to the safety of her room and her thoughts of Steve.

  Her pretend boyfriend.

  Now here he was, right in front of her.

  She had to do something. If she let this opportunity pass, she might never see him again. It was almost a miracle that he was here this year!

  If she talked to him, even for a few minutes, it would be a lot more than she had last year. And, who knows, maybe he’d really like her. Maybe the fact that she liked him so much was actually a sign.

  Maybe he’d ask her if she wanted to go out to the dock and make out.

  Her pulse quickened. Suddenly her mouth was dry.

  She had to do this.

  She straightened her back, took a short breath, and started toward him. Her only hesitation came when she thought she heard someone say her name, but it wasn’t directed at her. With Holly faking sick in the infirmary, there was no one here who had anything to say to her. So she sped up, refusing to allow that moment of faltering to stop her from doing the one thing she knew she had to try.