Dirty Wings

by Sarah Mccarry

  “Not really,” Maia says.

  “In that case, let’s go shopping.”

  Cass makes Maia reckless. She takes the keys to her dad’s Mercedes without asking, drives them to the Ave. Cass reclines in the passenger seat, her booted feet on the dashboard, somehow as ferocious in Maia’s clothes as she is in her own uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt. “Let’s go somewhere actually cool,” Cass says, and takes her to a vintage store they’ve never been in. A bored-looking girl with bright-dyed hair and a nose ring leans on the counter, chewing gum. The music is loud, an addictive beat that makes Maia twitch, but the singer’s voice is deep and sad. “Joy Division,” Cass says.

  “What?”

  “The band. Joy Division.”

  “It’s good.”

  “Yep.” Cass flips through shirts on hangers, organized by color, pulls things out and holds them up against Maia, talking to herself. If something meets with her approval she hands it to Maia, until Maia’s arms are piled high. Worn-thin T-shirts, jeans ragged and artfully blown out at the knees, even a pair of leather pants. “No way,” Maia says, and Cass laughs.

  “Come on,” she says, “live a little. You have the legs for them.” No one has ever in her life told Maia she has the legs for anything. She is not entirely sure she even knows what this means.

  “Thanks?” she says. Cass is rummaging through a pile of sweaters on a shelf with the fixed intensity of a bloodhound. The girl at the register watches them with interest.

  “What are you, like her personal shopper?” she calls.

  “She’s getting a makeover,” Cass says.

  “You need one,” the girl says. “No offense. You look like you fell into the fucking Gap. You guys want help? I’m bored out of my mind. I could show you where the cool stuff is. Some of it is in, like, piles.”

  Maia nods. The girl emerges from behind the counter. She’s wearing tiny plastic shorts and fishnets, and each wrist is sheathed in a jangling cuff of stacked bangles and charm bracelets. Her nails are painted alternating black and bright pink, and a black swoop of eyeliner extends her eyes like a cat’s. Maia realizes she is staring, but the girl doesn’t seem to mind. “I know you, right?” she says to Cass. “Why are you dressed all weird? I didn’t recognize you. I’m Judy. Remember me? We did coke in a bathroom at Camilla Winter’s party in like ninth grade. I’m pretty sure. Did you go to Northside? I hated that school. Oh my god, I puked for like ever at that party, I swear to god every time I drink tequila I practically puke up my entire small intestine.”

  “Maybe,” Cass says, still looking through the sweaters. “I’m around.”

  “Or wait, that wasn’t you. That was Patricia Taylor, and then right after that she got that thing where you don’t eat, you know that thing? Like, anorexia. We all thought she was just doing a ton of speed and then she was in the hospital all of a sudden and our first period class had to make her get-well cards and it was so weird because we all thought she was a total bitch but obviously you couldn’t, like, put that on the card, like oh hi Patricia sorry you’re in the hospital but the whole universe hates your guts, can you please stay there for, like, ever. I could never not eat, oh my god, I could probably do that thing where you make yourself barf afterward but not eating would be so hard. I know how I know you, I totally got it. You’re Rusty’s girlfriend.”

  “Who’s Rusty?” Maia asks.

  “Nobody,” Cass says. “And not anymore.”

  “He’s fucking crazy.”

  “Yes,” Cass says.

  “But good drugs. Oh my god, this one time I got a bunch of speed off Rusty and I was high for, like, a fucking month, it was some crazy rich-lady pharmaceutical shit, like I had never even heard of it. Not, like, Dexedrine. Like something really good. And I mean, I know my speeds, you know? You have his number?”

  “No,” Cass says. “You got shoes somewhere? She can’t wear loafers.”

  “Sure.” The girl points them to a corner, where combat boots like Cass’s lean against scuffed cowboy boots in a rainbow of colors. A shelf displays glittery platform shoes and high heels. “We got some Docs,” the girl adds. “New ones. Up by the counter. Fourteen hole. These cool velvet ones, you should see the velvet ones, I totally want a pair but I don’t get that great a discount here actually and Docs are totally expensive new, I remember when they were way cheaper but then they got super trendy and now they’re practically a million dollars. Soon only yuppies will have Docs, I’m telling you, like you’ll open up a fashion magazine or something and there they’ll be. But the velvet ones are really great.”

  “Okay,” Cass says. “Thanks.”

  “You sure you don’t have his number?”

  “Listen,” Cass says, exasperated, “you don’t want it. I promise. Can we try this stuff on?”

  Judy shrugs and shows Maia the dressing room. Maia piles Cass’s selections on a chair. Cass pokes her head through the curtain. “You good to go?”

  “I’ve put clothes on before,” Maia says drily.

  “Pssshhht,” Cass says. “Rich girls like you, never can tell what you know how to do.” Maia snaps the curtain shut in her face.

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  In the clothes Cass has picked for her, she is almost unrecognizable. How could such a tiny thing as someone else’s castoffs change her so completely? She looks at herself over her shoulder. Cass sticks her head back in.

  “Look at you,” she says, pleased. “I knew it. What size shoe do you wear?”

  “Eight and a half,” Maia says. Cass withdraws and a minute later hands her a pair of boots through the curtain. Maia laces them up slowly, can’t stop the huge smile that spreads across her face. “You can look,” she says, and Cass pulls the curtain open.

  “Oh, nice,” Judy says, leaning in so far that Maia is afraid she will fall over into the dressing room. “You look really good. Wow, do you exercise or something? I mean, wow, you are seriously lucky, you’re like as skinny as Patricia but not ugly.”

  Cass ignores Judy’s chatter, admiring her handiwork. “We should do something about your hair.”

  Judy puts her hands on Maia’s shoulders, turns her so that she’s facing the mirror. “You could cut it,” she says, holding Maia’s hair back so that it looks like it just reaches her chin. “You have, like, amazing bones. It’s all hidden. I mean, your hair is gorgeous too. But you would look so good if you cut it off.” She piles Maia’s hair on top of her head, holds it there. “Or like a ponytail up here. You know? Like super messy. That could be cool.”

  “My mom would kill me if I cut it,” Maia says.

  “Dude, that’s what moms do,” Judy says. “Moms just freak out. When I still lived at home my mom was on my case all the time. She was like, ‘Judy Marie, if I catch you smoking pot in my house one more time I will put you out on the street.’ And then I moved out? And now she calls me all the time crying, all like ‘Oh my god when are you coming over for dinnnerrrrr.’ Just be like, ‘Mom, chill.’”

  “You don’t know my mom.”

  “Her mom doesn’t chill much,” Cass agrees. “I’ll cut your hair for you, though. If you want. You don’t have to decide now.”

  “You should dye it,” Judy says. “Red would look so good. You’d have to bleach it first. Like with your skin? It would be super Miki Berenyi.”

  Maia has no idea who Miki Berenyi is. She tries to imagine herself with red hair. With short hair. With any hair other than the hair she’s always had, the glossy river of black that she usually keeps up but spills to the middle of her back when she takes it out of its bun.

  “Do you want to buy all this stuff?” Judy asks.

  “Not all of it,” Maia says. “I don’t have anywhere to keep it.”

  “Oh, cool,” Judy says, “you’re, like, disobeying. Oh my god. That’s so cute.”

  In the end, Maia buys tight black jeans, a band shirt (“New Order,” Judy says, approvingly, “like seriously the best band
ever.”), the black boots, and a soft and worn leather jacket that zips at an angle like a biker’s. She buys red dye in a plastic container and a packet of bleach and a bottle of developer. She buys a charm bracelet, like Judy’s. The total is a hundred and fifty dollars, more than she’s ever spent before in her life. Her parents opened a savings account for her when she was eight, and every month since then she’s dutifully deposited her allowance. She never had a reason to spend money before she met Cass. “Do you want anything?” she asks Cass.

  “Me?” Cass says, startled. “No, I’m good. Thanks.” But Maia had seen her eyeing one of the sweaters, a wool pullover the color of storm clouds, and she adds it to her pile.

  “This, too,” she says.

  Cass smiles. “You don’t miss a thing, do you,” she says. “Seriously, I’m fine. You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”

  “I’m not used to presents.”

  “All the more reason to get you one.”

  Cass shrugs, feigning indifference, but it’s obvious beneath the facade she’s pleased. “Thanks,” she says, gruffly.

  Judy starts to put Maia’s purchases into a bag, but Maia stops her. “Can I change into this stuff?”

  “Sure.”

  Maia puts the black jeans back on, laces up the boots, shrugs on the leather jacket over the New Order shirt. She puts her hair up like Judy suggested, in a messy ponytail on top of her head, and fastens the charm bracelet around her wrist. Judy gives her a bag for her old clothes, and she puts her khakis and loafers in with the hair dye. Cass is already wearing her new sweater.

  “Wow,” Judy says, “you really do look great.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Cass says.

  “I’m sure I’ll totally see you around. If you see Rusty, tell him I said hi?”

  “Sure,” Cass sighs.

  They emerge from the dim shop into the sunny street. Maia is giddy with the freedom of her new clothes, her former self in the heavy plastic bag dangling from her wrist.

  “Judy,” Cass says. “God bless her. What a weirdo.”

  “Let’s go get coffee or something,” Maia says. “My treat.”

  “Come on, quit buying me shit. You buy me coffee all the time.”

  “I want to,” Maia says. “Please. But you have to tell me who Rusty is.”

  Cass laughs. “I forgot why I never go in there. Just this guy I hung out with for a while. I stayed with him because he gave me drugs. And then he gave me the fucking clap.”

  “I’ve never had a boyfriend.” Maia is not going to ask Cass what the clap is.

  “Boyfriends are overrated.”

  “Oh.”

  Cass shoots her a sidelong glance. “You ever even kissed anybody, princess?”

  “Yes,” Maia says, embarrassed. She bites her lip. “I mean, just once. At a recital. This guy from Paris. He told me I was really good. At the piano!” she exclaims, catching Cass’s smirk. “But I think he said it just so I would let him kiss me.” Maia laughs. “In the janitor’s closet. It was at some high school that had a big auditorium.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “He was kind of a dick.”

  “They usually are,” Cass says. “You are really good, though.”

  “I was a lot better than him,” Maia says, and grins.

  “I have no doubt.”

  Later, they make popcorn and watch MTV, a thing Maia has never done. “What do you mean, you’ve never seen MTV?” Cass says, horrified.

  “I’m not really allowed,” Maia says.

  “Princess, you are seventeen.”

  “You met my mom.”

  “I did, yes.” Cass shakes her head. Maia is astonished by the music videos, the men in tight pants moving against animated backdrops. A man eats cereal at a round table in the middle of the desert with a lady in a glittering red headscarf. A man in a white undershirt plays the flute in a tree. More men do a synchronized, hopping dance atop a sand dune. Now, dressed all in white, they carry a black box across the desert. The images are nonsensical, dreamlike.

  “What is this?” Maia breathes; she is so agog Cass thinks she will reach out and pet the screen.

  “It’s rock music,” Cass says, laughing. “Oh, girl. We gotta get you out of the house.”

  The video in the desert is over. Another comes on: someone pouring colored paint on a pretty lady lying on the beach, while men in suits sing on a wooden sailboat.

  “I want you to cut my hair,” Maia says. Cass pauses, a handful of popcorn halfway to her mouth, and looks at her thoughtfully.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “Fuck my mom,” Maia says, and a glorious thrill runs through her. “I want music video hair.”

  “Okay,” Cass says. “Find me some scissors.”

  In Maia’s bathroom, Cass combs out her hair, the black sheet of it falling around Maia’s shoulders in rich waves. Each stroke of the brush soothes her. She looks at them in the mirror: Cass, raggedy and impish; her own smooth, solemn face with the black hair covering her like a coat of crows’ wings.

  “You sure about this?” Cass’s reflection says to hers. “This is a lot of hair to grow back.”

  “I want to know who’s underneath it.”

  “Fair enough,” Cass says. “How short?”

  Maia holds her hands level with her chin. “Short.” She closes her eyes, hears the crisp sound of the scissors opening, the shearing of them closing next to her ear. She can feel her hair falling away from her head and drifting across her body. The shhkkk, sshhkkk again, and again, and more of her hair lands heavily on her shoulders, her bare feet. Cass puts one hand to her chin, gently tilts her head one way and then the other. “Look down,” she says, and then, “Look back up again.” She rests one hand at the place where Maia’s neck curves into her shoulder, leaves it there, takes it away. Maia can feel Cass’s fingers running through her hair, holding the strands to be cut next. When the noise of the scissors stops for a moment, she feels Cass’s cool palm over her eyes. “Not yet,” Cass says. “Let me make sure it’s even first.” More snips. Her head feels so light she thinks it is in danger of floating away altogether. Silence. “You can look,” Cass says.

  Maia opens her eyes. The girl in the mirror is a stranger, her sleek bob falling to either side from a ruler-straight central part and ending sharply at her chin. The fine bones of her face stand out in startling relief. The full curve of her mouth crooks up at one corner in a disbelieving grin.

  “Oh my god,” Maia says. Behind her, Cass smiles, pleased as a cat in cream. “It’s perfect. How did you get it so even?”

  Cass lifts one shoulder, drops it. “There are a couple of things I’m good at. You want to dye it?”

  “I don’t know,” Maia says, and then, “Yeah.”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Cass says.

  The dye takes forever. Cass makes Maia put on an old shirt while she mixes lightener and developer in a bowl Maia steals from the kitchen. The sharp chemical scald of the bleach fills Maia’s bathroom and makes them both cough. It burns even worse on Maia’s scalp; Cass tells her she has to leave it on for at least forty-five minutes for it to strip the color out of her dark hair, and they watch more MTV, Maia’s eyes watering from the sting and fumes. When Cass finally washes the bleach out of her hair she almost cries in relief. Cass lathers in the red dye, smearing Vaseline at Maia’s hairline to keep the color from staining her skin, makes her watch more MTV, rinses the red out at last. The color stains the tub, the sink, the towels, the floor. Cass rubs her head gently with a towel, combs her fingers through Maia’s hair. Maia stares at herself in the mirror.

  If short-haired Maia was a stranger, this flame-haired creature is an alien. Maia turns her head from side to side, staring. The red is an unnatural, gorgeous blaze of color. Cass has transformed her into someone she had no idea was waiting inside her.

  “People are going to
look at you, now, princess,” Cass says, watching Maia watch herself. “You better get used to it.”

  “I love it.”

  Cass wipes the back of her hand across her forehead in an exaggerated gesture of mock relief. “Good thing,” she says. “No going back now. If your mom throws you out, you can stay with me. It’s getting late; want to go to that show?”

  Maia nods happily, though she can barely tear herself away from the mirror. She puts the New Order shirt and her new black jeans back on, laces up her new combat boots. Cass surveys the wreckage of the bathroom. “You want to clean up?”

  “Fuck my mom,” Maia repeats, gleeful.

  Cass grins. “That’s the spirit. I don’t feel like walking. Can we steal your dad’s car again?”

  In the car, Cass roots around in her bag until she finds a scratched cassette tape, which she pops in the car’s player. A surfy line of guitar comes through Maia’s dad’s old speakers, and Cass turns the volume up. The hook is poppy and sweet; a man’s voice come in, clear and almost as high as a girl’s. Cass sings along happily.

  “Why are they singing about caribou?”

  “Ree-pent!” Cass yells with relish. “I don’t know, it’s the Pixies.”

  “Is that punk?”

  “Sweet child of mine,” Cass says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

  The show is at a falling-apart house in the old industrial neighborhood by the locks. The yard is a sea of teenagers dressed in black, smoking cigarettes and drinking out of bottles in paper bags. Cass laughs at Maia’s huge eyes. “Nobody’ll bite you,” she says, patting Maia’s hand on the gearshift. “Promise.” Maia parks a block away, double-checks the locked doors. She follows a few steps behind Cass, pulling her shoulders up to her ears and hunching into herself. She wants to go home and crawl under her piano and never leave her house again.

  These kids are terrifying. They’re arrayed in rags, their hair standing up in spikes or ratted out in snarled manes. They have safety pins through their ears and hoops through their lips and chains around their necks and big black boots, on their feet, and they stare at Cass and Maia as the girls walk by. Cass slows until Maia bumps into her and takes Maia’s hand. “You’re doing great, princess,” she murmurs into Maia’s ear, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “These fuckers’ve never seen a girl as pretty as you, is all.”