But as soon as they got inside of their bunk the smell of shampoo, perfume, and blow dryers on hair hit their nostrils with the force of a spiked tetherball.
“Shit!” Eleanor exclaimed. “We only have an hour and fifteen to get ready for the social. Dibs on the outlet near the vanity.”
Indigo remembered wearily, with the letdown of a sad trombone note, that tonight was the annual social between Silver Springs and its “brother camp,” Kinnetonka Heights. At the very least, this meant she’d have no privacy in the bathroom area, where the Beat cabin girls would be grooming themselves within an inch of their young lives.
“Do I have to?” She groaned.
“Yes! Now hurry up and go get all hot,” said Puja, who happened to be shuffling by, carrying a flat iron and an armful of hair products.
Indy was in no mood to pretend she felt anything besides contempt for the array of fourteen- to sixteen-year-old zit-plagued wankers and Young Republicans in Training that constituted the camper population of Kinnetonka. It was western Massachusetts’s premier summer destination for aspiring young male screenwriters, entertainment lawyers, novelists, news reporters, show runners, and agents. If their parents dined regularly at Robert De Niro’s restaurant with New York heavy hitters like Arianna Huffington and Anderson Cooper, the odds were that they sent their kid there.
The facilities were of the same five-star quality as Silver Springs’s—central A/C in each bunk, Michelin star–appointed chefs in the kitchens, Fulbright Scholar instructors—but the maturity level of the average Kinnetonka guy was decidedly lower than any Silver Springs girl’s. Not only did that fact confirm the “girls mature faster than guys” axiom—but there seemed to be something about creative guys that made them infinitely more stunted than their female counterparts.
Indy finished in the bathroom and slogged back to her and Eleanor’s bedroom to get ready for this thing. Socials were mandatory—Lillian’s obligation to the Silver Springs parents to expose their daughters to acceptable marriage candidates from as young an age as possible outpaced her desire to please the campers.
Indigo grabbed her shower caddy from her room and dodged the manic bodies of her fellow bunk mates—Yvonne, Puja, and various actresses, dancers, and singers, including one Asian soprano that reportedly made Lea’s Michele & Salonga both burst into sobs when they visited last summer as guest critics on Industry Showcase Day. All of the girls scurried around the common area of the enormous bathroom, setting, straight-ironing, and blow-drying their hair; priming, exfoliating, and toning their skin; and shaving, curling, clipping, tweezing, squeezing, spraying, and applying various other creams and shellacs to various nooks and crannies hidden around their young, hysterical flesh. Yvonne stood in the corner by the toilets doing a desperate jig, trying to pull on a giant pair of Spanx. It looked like the strange Picasso painting Indy always liked—Guernica.
“Okay, new plan,” Yvonne yelped. “Somebody hold these, and I’ll get a running start and jump into them.” No one volunteered.
Indy slipped into one of the shower stalls and let the water run until she could inhale the steam that rose from the tile beneath her, then slipped off her flip-flops and jeans, then her tank top, before hanging it up next to the stack of high-thread-count towels the camp provided. She stepped underneath the showerhead and let the water stream over her nakedness, being careful not to look down at what she imagined was her huge, post-pig-out belly.
As the shower head pulsed, she closed her eyes and let herself float far away from the chaos around her, drowned out the sounds of the blow dryers, the requests to borrow so-and-so’s spray gel, and Eleanor’s alternating shrieks of “Where are my pewter Ferragamo ballet flats?” and “Who the fuck took my goddamn pewter Ferra-fucking-gamo ballet flats!” Indy took deep breaths and then squeezed out the excess water from her long, damp hair, wrapping a towel around her body before slipping on her flip-flops and schlepping her stuff back to her and Eleanor’s room. She caught her reflection in the makeup mirror on the vanity that stood directly in front of the door of their bedroom. Eleanor sat in the chair before the mirror with her hair pulled tight into pin curls, applying some kind of thousand-dollar under-eye concealer on her face that was marketed to women four times her age. Indigo, wearing a puce towel and holding two armfuls of shower caddy supplies, caught her reflection. She saw how flushed her cheeks were and how lazy and wet her eyes looked.
“What are you, going for the natural look?” Eleanor said as she applied mascara on the fringe atop one of her darty, snakelike eyes.
“I was thinking of wearing my long black dress.” Indigo ignored the no-makeup crack and pulled her favorite ankle-length vintage silk black maxi-dress from her closet. She held the dress up to herself in front of the full-length mirror on the wall between their beds.
“All right, Morticia,” Eleanor replied into the magnifying side of the mirror. She’d begin examining and squeezing her pores, and seemed to be having a hard time even pretending she cared what her roommate was going to wear for the boys who were coming to their campus in T minus one hour. She had to take care of herself. “Has anybody seen my fucking Chanel padded clutch!” she screamed to no one, mid–blackhead squeeze. Indy smoothed the diaphanous fabric that graced the neckline of her dress over her bust. She adjusted the fit in the hips and tried not to scrutinize her body too intensely when she stood to the side, checking out her silhouette in profile.
Indy did not look anything close to how she’d hoped. She grabbed her meager assortment of makeup items and hoped she could at least figure out something that wouldn’t make her look like Sylvia Plath next to these girls.
In the bathroom, all of the girls staring into the mirror looked like circus ponies or dolls made out of candy. A row of them expertly swiped glosses, brushes, wands, and combs across their lips, cheeks, brows, and eyes like they’d been born knowing how to gussy themselves up. Even Yvonne looked like a burlesque superstar; Puja, a Freida Pinto–esque leading lady.
“What’s up?” Tiffany Melissa Portman, an aspiring actress who claimed to be Natalie Portman’s Protestant second cousin—smiled her powder-pink, barely there lips at Indigo in the mirror.
“Hey—I hope this isn’t weird to ask.” Indy looked back at her in the mirror. “But can you help me with your makeup? It’s just you always look so great.”
“OMG, of course!” Tiffany, like most actresses, was thrilled to help as long as the request for her assistance was couched in a compliment of some kind. She pushed Indy into the spotlight of the tracks set up behind the sink and scrutinized her skin like some kind of Clinique counter saleswoman in one of those dumb lab coats. Tiffany smeared on some cold, gooey stuff, then some dry, pasty stuff, then powder. Then she told Indy to look up, then down, then to “go like this” with her lips, then to smile, then make a fish face. When she stepped aside, Indigo saw a version of herself in the mirror unlike any she’d ever seen in her life. She sort of looked gorgeous and she sort of looked like a Lisa Frank folder had exploded onto her face. It was hard to tell if leaving the bunk in this condition was in any way socially acceptable. But the sight of her surely excited Tiffany, not to mention the mini–flash mob of bunk mates that had gathered around her mid-makeover, eager to witness the real-time effects of a generous application of another girl’s enormous makeup selection.
“Wow!” Yvonne exclaimed, genuinely impressed.
“You look beautiful.” Puja smiled behind her own rosy, glossy lips.
“So, what are you changing into?” Tiffany asked, clearly eager to complete Indigo’s transformation.
“Oh. Well, I’m not sure if I…” Indigo glanced down at her dress, embarrassed that she was actually planning to wear what she had on. The silk that twirled around her as she walked had always made her feel beautiful. Now, looking around at the miles of skin exposed among the girls who circled her in the bathroom, she felt like a nun. “Can one of you guys maybe lend me something?”
And that’s how Indigo Ham
lisch ended up wearing skintight hoochie jean shorts and a too-small wife beater that Tiffany assured her “really flattered her cans.” She was also sporting enough jewelry to set off the metal detector at the closest airport, Jimmy Choo stilettos “almost in her size” from one of the Greek girls in the bunk over who sang opera, and so much hairspray in her giant updo that if a bullet were to graze her head, her brain would be perfectly safe.
The other tenth-year girls teetered down the path from the upper bunks to the Kurosawa Screening Room and Mocktail Bar, where their intercamp socials were held each summer. Indy still felt like a sausage stuffed into trashy casing. It was a weird price to pay for fitting in. That’s what these socials were more about than anything else—impressing the girls, not the boys, was what mattered most. Even Eleanor seemed impressed when she saw her roommate gussied up like a blowfish that survived a crayon-factory accident. “You look hot,” she said, without any audible irony in her voice.
Indigo had to hold on to Yvonne’s sturdy forearm, which was draped in the bell sleeve of a form-fitting, cleavage-flattering aquamarine top, as she inched along at a stuttering pace, trailing behind the other girls but trying to keep her head up high, even though she felt weighed down by Puja’s loaned-out dangly chandelier earrings and Tiffany’s masterpiece of a hairstyle. Indy may have felt like a drag queen, but everybody in her bunk swore she looked great—her body looked “amazing,” she didn’t look “the least bit fat.” In no way was her makeup “clownish.” So, that was something, right?
Maybe there’d be a cute boy at the social—a new one, not Jay Stegbrandt, a faux-hippie nerd with a Jew-’fro who was, for some reason, best friends with Andrew Cook—a creepy entertainment lawyer wannabe who really seemed to hate girls. At least there was always Evan Zander, the alpha tennis pro from Kinnetonka, to stare at. He wasn’t Indigo’s type—he was too young, and jocky to boot—but he was an undeniably handsome spectacle. In fact, Indy once sketched a statue of Perseus at the Met and later realized it looked exactly like Evan was staring back at her from the page.
Then, as she finally hit her stride, walking without Yvonne’s help and even flipping her head back in music video–like divadom, Indy saw something in the distance that made all of her confidence, all of her mojo, her steez, her moxie, grind to a halt with the bluntness of a record scratch.
Nick, Lucy, Jen Rant, and Jim Dybbs, all dressed up but not wearing anything much fancier than jeans and T-shirts with jackets, were in front of the art studio, walking together in the direction of the staff parking lot.
“Indy!” Lucy shouted, before Indigo could pretend she didn’t see them and they didn’t see her. Lucy waved, and Indy felt like she was crumpling up like a piece of scrap paper. Her posture changed.
Lucy bounded toward her. She wore skinny, dark-wash, expensive Seven jeans with a flowy, heather gray top under a cropped leather moto-jacket that fit her perfectly. She looked effortlessly chic, pretty, tiny, and grown-up at once. Indigo cringed when she noticed how little makeup she had on to boot. Even her dimples glowed with the wattage of some ultra-bright natural quality of something that just exists with no work behind it, like how the sun just comes up and goes down every day without anybody putting muscle into the process.
“Look at you! You look…” Lucy chose her adjective carefully, “…amazing!” Indy could tell her friend was weirded out by her crazy makeup and skintight outfit.
“I know, right?” Indigo figured she might as well poke fun at herself. As the girls she was walking with receded into the background, she saw Nick, perfect Nick, approach her and Lucy as they stood in the all-too-appropriate space between the staffers and the campers on the grass. Indy’s heart raced as he got closer. She was outright slutted up. But part of her was glad that Nick would finally see her body.
“Where are you guys going?” Indy asked Lucy, trying to shake off the attention she could feel on all sides of her.
“We’re going to see Bob Dylan! He’s playing some outdoor festival at Wildwood.”
“Westwood.” Nick’s deep voice arrived before he did, approaching the two girls with a bemused correction of whatever Lucy said was the venue they were going to.
He half smiled and then looked Indigo directly in the eye. It was like he could see right through all her makeup and hairspray. She made up her mind: she was in love with him. More than anything else—more than she wanted to be a famous artist, to be the youngest-ever participant in the Whitney Biennial, to make enough money to afford places in Paris, Amsterdam, and New York, she wanted to make Nick Estep fall in love with her.
“Hey, Indy.” Nick was wearing a checkered button-down shirt over jeans, and he smelled like Ivory soap and sawdust. His longish dark hair was combed back behind his ears, his face had a day of stubble grown in, and he wore a battered suit jacket over his shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked incredible. Indigo couldn’t help but notice, with a sinking heart, that, as he stood there next to Lucy, they looked like a perfectly matched couple.
Lucy winked at Indy, encouraging her to talk to him.
“So, Dylan is playing Westwood?” Indigo said, trying to sound really cool and “whatever” about the fact that an ancient rock icon she knew she was supposed to care about was going to be singing folk songs in his horrible, nasal voice at the Westwood Music Festival, five miles from town. She figured Nick was a big fan and nodded as though she was really absorbed in the news that one of his favorites was in town. “Man, I wish I could come with you guys.” She winced at her own words as she spoke them.
“Oh my God, me, too. I know. It’s so stupid that you can’t.” Lucy frowned. “I guess you guys have the social tonight?”
Indigo couldn’t make out a single word her best friend said at this point, because all she could think about since Nick said hi and stared at her was how intensely she could feel his eyes on her body. There’s no way she was imagining that. Right? As wrong as it sounded, she wanted to feel like an object, like a masterpiece. That must be what Lucy felt being onstage, but the attentions of an audience seemed useless compared to the undivided, adoring gaze of one person.
Indy staggered a bit on her shoes but caught herself before she actually tripped.
“You falling for me again, Hamlisch?” Nick smiled. “I thought I told you to be careful.”
Omigod. Indy’s face flushed red.
“Haha, I think somebody may have started the party earlier than the rest of the girls,” Lucy said, smiling and probably wondering what Nick was referring to. Indy had never told Lucy about how he had come to her rescue during Pollock.
“Nick, you ready?” Jen Rant interrupted the chatter with characteristic bluntness.
“Yeah, relax, we were just saying hi to Indy for a sec,” Nick told her, and Indy knew that she wasn’t imagining the jealous look Jen was throwing her way.
Jim Dybbs stood grinning to the side, completely oblivious to everything going on. He was probably just excited at the chance to be included in a social outing with staffers who were way cooler than he was.
“I guess we should hit it.” Lucy looked at Indy with an apologetic smile.
“Yup,” Nick said, his eyes scanning her body for one last time, landing on her eyes for a quick smirk. “See you later. Have fun tonight.”
“Bye, girl!” Lucy said, hugging her friend and infusing the air with the fresh pow of her fruity shampoo scent as she did.
“Have fun.” Indigo stood still as the group walked off into the dusk toward Nick’s Chevy truck. As they piled in, Indigo felt horribly abandoned and suddenly foolish. She looked around for Eleanor, Puja, Yvonne, and the rest of her bunk mates, but they were gone, too. She’d have to trudge off to the Kurosawa Screening Room in those stupid shoes all by herself. Maybe she’d make out with a guy there just for the hell of it—just to, perversely and in her own mind, teach Nick a lesson. For what? For not scooping her up and taking her with him to the Bob Dylan concert? Fuck Bob Dylan. But really, what was he supposed to do, kidnap her
? Get fired? Take her away to some place far from here where he could eat her alive with his eyes and maul her naked body with his hands before roughly taking her virginity on a motel bed somewhere?
Well, yeah.
Indy looked up from her shoes on the path she was teetering on and realized she was directly in front of the Kurosawa Screening Room and Mocktail Bar. She’d somehow made it there without even knowing it. Her fantasies had floated her to this stupid social, and her feet already hurt like hell before it began.
The sounds of thumping hip-hop and pop vocal mashups, combined with the amped-up, high-volume/low-content chatter of party conversation, wafted through the front door of the low-slung, modern building. Indy tried to shake off the feeling she felt watching Lucy get into Nick’s truck for the night, and readjusted her posture so she at least looked confident, as she made her way inside the screening room to socialize with boys her own age.
10
As soon as Indigo walked into the Screening Room, she knew her night was going to be disappointing. The awkwardness hit her in the face like the foul stench of garbage on a New York City sidewalk. The girls were on one side of the mocktail bar, sitting on red leather stools while they twirled hairpieces and virgin mojito stirrers. They flirted with one another and threw glances across the room, where clumps of preteen boys stood at a suitably not-gay distance from one another and traded quick spurts of derisive laughter with awkward, darting glances at the tween sirens at the other side of the lounge.
“Seriously?” Indy said, sidling up to her bunkmates. “We’re still doing the whole boys-versus-girls thing?”
“Listen, sister. You can take the kids out of junior high, but you can’t take the junior high out of the kids,” Yvonne said, chewing on a straw. She opened a tiny cocktail umbrella. “Looks like rain!” she added, looking up at the vaulted ceiling. Yes. Obviously, Yvonne knew a lot about maturity.
Art Girls Are Easy Page 8