“I think she is,” I said.
But what I was thinking was: Does it matter? And: Do you think I’m pretty? It was like two trains pulling out of the station of my brain and I couldn’t decide which one to be on. It shouldn’t matter how she looked. This I knew. She was a musician, and her music should be what mattered. And anyway, women are always held to this insane standard about their looks. Like I once read a review of this girl comedian and the reviewer, he actually said that the reason this comic was so funny was that these really crass things were coming out of this tiny, pretty woman. Like if she hadn’t been beautiful, her jokes would have been what—boring?
Anyway, I’d like to say that was the train I chose. But all the while I was thinking about how Seth had never told me I was pretty. I clicked on a link to one of her videos.
“Yeah, I guess it’s hard to tell with the hats and the makeup. All that makeup.”
I looked at the screen. Possum favored red lipstick and cat eyes and sometimes she wore false eyelashes: it was all a sort of fifties glam. “I guess it’s for the camera—”
“Girls always think they need to wear so much makeup. There are whole channels devoted to showing you how to do it.”
“I know—” I’d actually looked up tutorials on those lips and eyes. I even tried to get the red-red lips she had, but I’d looked like a clown. When I tried to wipe the lipstick off it smeared across my cheeks. I’d had to text Gwen to find out how to take it off. Vaseline, she’d texted back to me and an emoji of a kissy-face. She could do the red lips perfectly. So could Hannah.
“It’s utterly ridiculous,” Seth said. “And false.” He tugged at the neck of his shirt.
“Some girls think it’s like an expression of their personality.” Without meaning to, I rubbed my fingers over my own lips.
“It’s false. It’s a false promise. You offer up one thing, but underneath, it’s something totally different.”
“And underneath all that is what really matters.”
And also: Maybe she is not offering anything up in the first place.
He turned from the screen to look at me. Possum was still singing, but it was all oohs and ahs and la la las. He got a goopy smile. “That is both the sweetest and naïvest thing I have ever heard. It’s perfect.”
He put one hand on my cheek and kissed me, soft and sweet.
“Now come on,” he said. “We need to get this video done.”
“You know, you should get credit for these videos. Like at school. I think Ms. Lynch teaches a video class or film or something. Charlie took it. With Penelope, of course.”
“Gack, Penelope Richards.”
“Exactly.”
“Your brother always seemed relatively sane.”
“Relatively.”
“But Penelope Richards. Gack.”
Gack indeed.
Seth pushed a button on the back of the camera. It was a handheld one, small enough to disappear into his pocket. He’d spent a fortune on it because it had amazing video quality. “Anyway,” he said. “All I’m asking is for you to play a role. Acting. You barely even need to say anything. Just put on a costume and make the dumb expressions. I’ll be talking, and you’ll be like the visualizations of my ideas.”
“I’d like to be the visualization of your ideals,” I said. But maybe it was too soft for him to hear, because he didn’t respond.
“It’ll be easy, really. There’s the indecisive girl who won’t actually speak her mind and just lets you make the decision.”
“Maybe she doesn’t care about whatever it is?”
“All the time? No.”
“So what would I do for that?”
“You just say, ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do?’ See, it’s not just that it shows a lack of personality. In part it’s not her fault, because society has told girls not to have strong opinions. But that’s what we’re trying to fight against, right?”
“Sure, okay.”
“And then there’s girls that undercut other girls. Like Remy,” he said.
“Or Gwen.”
“Exactly. And again, it’s because society pits women against one another, but still. So for that you can just, I don’t know. I think maybe you can pretend you’re talking to another girl and be like, ‘Are you really sure about that dress?’ Or, ‘Do you really think you’re ready for calculus?’”
“I don’t know about this, Seth. I’ve never actually heard anyone—”
“It’s exaggeration to make a point.”
Hyperbole. Dewey DeWitt’s voice rings in my head.
“And we’ve already talked about makeup. How it’s a lie.”
“It’s just, I don’t want it to be taken the wrong way. Like, you want it to be pro women, right?”
He stopped playing with the camera and finally looked at me. “Of course. How could you even question that?”
“I just want to make sure.”
“Come on, Lexi, you know me. I’m an actual T-shirt-wearing feminist. What I’m trying to do is reveal to girls how they’ve been manipulated and how that impacts their behavior and how we all need to change.”
I twisted my fingers together. “I see that. I guess. I don’t know.”
“What?”
I wanted to tell him that I thought it was off, somehow. That it seemed like it was mocking. But I knew that wasn’t his intention. And anyway, he had his mind made up. So I said, “I’m just not a very good actress.”
He left the camera and came over to me. He was right in front of me, my eyes to his chin. He put both hands on my arms. “You know you’re the most beautiful girl I know.” He hesitated. “Have you ever seen a fern unfold?”
“Yes, I think so,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what this sudden right turn in conversation was all about.
“The way a fern unfolds is the way you smile. I watch you and try to see it happen. It’s so slow it’s almost imperceptible. But then it takes over your whole face like the fern reaching up for the sun.”
I turned my head. His cheeks were flushed, eyes turned down.
“Seth—”
“That was corny, I know.”
“No. It was the loveliest thing anyone ever said to me.”
He smiled now, quick and full. I leaned over and kissed him, first on the cheek, then on the lips. I could kiss Seth Winthrop for hours, I thought.
He pulled away. “Here’s the thing: you get it. You just do. You get what it means to be a full-on, self-possessed girl. You don’t take any bullshit, but you still smile like a fern. You aren’t like all those girls I’m talking about. That’s why I need you in my video.”
So I agreed. Maybe it was what he said about the fern, or maybe I really did believe what he was trying to say, but I think it was something else. When he talked about me, I saw myself differently—his way. If I let him record me, then I could see me as he saw me, and that would be a powerful thing.
NOW
A green sign comes into view. “This is it,” Zack says. “Where do you want us to drop you in Danbury?”
“The closer to eighty-four the better,” she says. “That’s where you need to go, too, right? To go into Pennsylvania?”
“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Charlie asks her.
“Tempting,” she says.
“We’d drive you right to New York on the way back,” he says. All this care for a girl he’s barely even met. I mean, I agree with him. We should take her to New York. We should make sure she gets where she’s going. That’s just, like, the basic level of decency. But where the hell was all this care when I needed him?
“But if we find Adrian Wildes, there will be all this hoopla, and I really need to get down to Florida before the spring break crowds start coming in March. If I can get those tips, I’ll be set through the slow summer.”
Charlie nods. So sure he is that we’re going to find Adrian Wildes, this seems like a legit excuse.
We drive a little longer until we’re right by the o
n-ramp for the highway. Zack pulls the car into the parking lot of a Gulp ’N’ Go. “I need some things,” I say as I get out of the car with Harper.
“I’m gonna top off the oil,” Zack says.
“And then we have to go,” Charlie says.
“I have to tell you something,” I say as we step into the Gulp ’N’ Go. The fluorescent lights and all the brightly colored signs and food shock my eyes. The smell of old pizza and hot dogs turns my stomach.
“Shoot,” she says as she examines a display of nuts and trail mix.
“I don’t think you should hitch all the way to Florida.”
“Why not?”
“It just seems dangerous.”
“I’ve got a code,” she says. “A set of rules, you know, for keeping safe. It’s mostly about the clothes. Schlubby but clean clothes. Manly clothes, you know.” She turns to me. “That’s why for, like, half a second I thought maybe you really were a hitchhiker when I got in the car.”
I look down at myself and realize she and I are dressed in a pretty similar way—faded jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies. “Wouldn’t you get more rides with a short skirt and booby shirt?”
She shakes her head and her face grows dark. “Not if you want to make it where you’re going. That’s rule one of hitchhiking, okay?”
“Okay,” I agree, even though I don’t plan to ever need those rules.
“You dress like that, a certain kind of person will pick you up. And that type of person will expect a certain type of payment. And nine times out of ten, that type of person will take it if you don’t give it.”
I pick up a pack of chips, look at them for a minute, then put them back down. “That’s like saying that a girl deserves it if she wears a tight dress to a party.”
She shakes her head. “None of us deserve anything. I’m just telling you about the kind of people you meet when you’re hitching.”
None of us. Us.
She takes out her lip balm and applies it. “People like to categorize other people, right? And the first clue they use is dress. It’s wrong, and I fight the good fight, but when I’m out on the road I try to send a very clear message that fits into the preconceived categories. I’m a girl, but I’m a tough girl, the kind who has done this before and will spot your tricks.”
“You are that girl.”
“Sure, that’s one part of who I am. But it’s not the whole of it. None of us fits one hundred percent into those boxes, right? We all blur the lines. I’m not changing myself, just how people see me.”
She chooses a box of granola bars and heads toward the cold case.
“I don’t understand,” I say, and my voice cracks. “What’s the difference between changing how people see you and how you actually are?”
She pivots so she’s looking right at me. Behind her is a case full of milks and juices that come in all different colors and it’s like she’s standing in front of some crazy stained-glass window. Like this is church. “Lexi,” she says. “What happened?”
“What?” I ask, and step back.
“You keep talking about throwing off one life for another or changing who you are. What life are you trying to get away from?”
I scoff and kick the linoleum. “I don’t think we told you about our hometown. It’s, like, the boringest boring in boringland. And I—”
“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I wear disguises. And you’re right, Harper isn’t really my name. It’s Natalie. I’ve got this armor to put on when I hitch, and I guess I have some lighter version of it that I wear all the time, but the trick of it is, Lexi, you have to know who you can trust to see you without it.”
She might as well have told me the trick to being rich was knowing the lottery numbers before they were picked.
“You can trust me, Lexi,” she says. “If there’s anything you want to—”
“You need to go to New York,” I say. “And we need to go find stupid Adrian Wildes who is probably dead or drunk but whatever. Anyway, you want a slushy? I’m gonna get a slushy if you want one.”
She follows me over to the slushy machine and grabs two cups. “On me,” she says. “What flavor?”
“Blue?”
“Good choice.”
She fills both of our cups and then we pay at the register.
I dig into my pocket and pull out the Good Feelings Book. I find one that says Life’s the journey, not the destination, and then write my address on the back. “Will you send me a postcard when you get there or something? Just so I know?”
“All right, Mom,” she says. But she smiles.
It feels weird getting into the car without her. It feels worse to drive away and leave her there sitting on the bench out in front of the store, drinking her slushy and waiting for her next ride. “We should have kidnapped her,” I say.
Charlie is driving now, and he looks in the rearview mirror. He slows down. “Maybe—”
But then we lock eyes in the mirror. We can’t actually make her come with us. We can’t make her take the safer choice. So he keeps driving and I lean back in the seat and sip so hard on my blue slushy that I give myself a brain freeze.
Maybe Zack is right. Maybe all boys want to be a hero sometimes. But I don’t think Harper needs a hero. Too bad there’s no way to put out a sign: Good people of the earth: now is the time that I need saving.
BEFORE
December
When Charlie came home for winter break, it wasn’t like he did it with any fanfare. He just oozed back into our life. He was there all the time, in every spare, open space. At the dinner table. In my way in the bathroom when I needed to get ready for school. “Jesus, Charlie,” I said, “can you stop picking at your zits so I can brush my teeth.”
He opened the bathroom door. “What’s up your ass?” he asked me.
I wanted to punch him. Hard. Right in the gut.
Instead, I pushed past him into the bathroom. Just three more weeks, I told myself. Because I still thought he was going back to school. That in three weeks his break would be over and I could go back to pretending I was an only child.
He was on the couch when I got downstairs. Feet up and reading Real Simple magazine. “You could drive me to school,” I told him. All that week I’d seen Remy Yoo dropped off by her older brother and let myself believe that Charlie and I could be like that.
“I could. I could also stick needles under my fingernails.”
“Screw you,” I told him.
“Jesus, what’s with you and the rides? You flipped out when I wouldn’t pick you up a couple of weeks ago from what’s-his-name’s house—”
“Seth.” I squeezed my hands into fists. Not now. Not this.
“And now you’re demanding rides to school? I walked to the bus stop and so can you, princess.”
When we were younger, we used to get into it big-time. Rolling on the floor, punching, scratching fights. Mom and Dad didn’t know what to do with us. Now, in my mind, I launched across the room and landed on him and I ripped his eyeballs out.
“Screw you,” I said again.
“You were nicer when you were with that guy. Or at least, you didn’t bug me all the time. I mean, honestly, Lexi. I’m on break. Break. That means I get to rest. I need to rest, okay? You don’t need to give me such a hard time about it.”
It was like I could actually feel the rage boiling inside of me. My vision blurred. Since Seth and I broke up I had been scrambling to build a wall to hold me up, and here came Charlie just knocking it down, pulling out bricks so the whole thing fell down around me. And I fell down, too.
“Well, you were a thousand times cooler before Penelope came into your life.”
“Don’t talk about Penelope,” he said.
“What? It’s true. Everyone knows it. I mean, God, Charlie, you’re going to freaking Essex College when you could’ve gone to Carnegie Mellon. All for her, and now she’s gone.”
“Lexi!” It was my mom, behind me. She put her hand on my arm. “Come on,” she said. “
Let’s get you to school.”
She practically yanked me out of the room. Charlie didn’t react. Mom’s face was tense and pale. She brought me into the mudroom and shut the door to the house behind us. It was like I was seven again and I’d really done it.
“He started it, Mom.”
“It’s okay, Lexi. Just.” She sighed and tucked her hair behind her ear. She bent over and picked up a pair of Charlie’s sneakers and tossed them into the cubby where he should’ve put them himself. It’s been the same rule since we were born, practically, and he still couldn’t manage to do it. “Charlie’s going through some things right now.”
Charlie and Penelope had broken up three months ago. Seth had just dumped me three weeks before. If one of us should get a pass because we were going through some things it was me. I grabbed my coat off the peg by the door.
“I can drive you,” she said.
“No,” I told her. “I’m fine.” Because that’s what I had to do. I had to be fine. I wasn’t going to be a pathetic whelp picking at pimples and reading home organization magazines. If there was one thing I learned from Charlie, it was how not to act when things go bad. I would build this wall back up, brick by brick. I would not be like Charlie.
I would not.
I went into school from the back bus circle. The hallway went right by the band room. Remy was in there with some of the other band and drama kids who hung out there, mostly juniors and seniors. I knew them all. Our school was small like that. I could’ve walked right in and maybe they would’ve blinked, but it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. I could’ve said, “Remy, can I talk to you?”
Remy looked up. We locked eyes.
I kept walking.
SIX
Once upon a time, a princess was born in a kingdom on a cliff. The view of the sea was so magnificent that no man could go to the edge of the cliff without throwing himself from it. Many great men were lost, and so the king issued a proclamation: any man who could go to the edge of the cliff and resist its pull would have his daughter’s hand in marriage. Princes and commoners traveled from near and far to test their will, but not one could pass the test. The princess could not bear the loss of life another day. At the break of dawn, she marched out to the cliff’s edge. There she stood, the sun rising over the ocean, which had momentarily stilled. She had passed the test. When she turned, she saw beside her a bold knight, his armor glinting in the early sunlight.
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