Not the Girls You're Looking For

by Aminah Mae Safi

  “Fine. Sorry.” But Audrey didn’t sound all that sorry at all.

  Lo reentered the room, ignored Lulu, and looked at Audrey. “I talked to your mom. She thinks you got up early for a run. So climb out your window in some workout clothes and you can come back as dehydrated and ‘sun-dazed’ as you want. You’re welcome.”

  “She can’t climb out her window!” Lulu felt cartoon smoke ought to be steaming out of her ears.

  “She better. At least in the next twenty minutes, before her mom checks to make sure I’m not a liar. And I don’t want her thinking I’m a liar. She should use our leaving as cover.” And before she heard any further opposition, Lo put up a hand. “Lulu. Go take a walk.”

  Lulu opened her mouth, baring her teeth. That quiet voice in the back of her conscience reminded her to take a deep breath.

  “I am not messing around. Go take a walk. Now.” Lo grabbed Lulu’s car keys off Audrey’s dresser and shook them until they made a light jingling noise. “I’ll be in the car. Go walk it off.”

  “You know what. Fine. I’m out of here.” Lulu threw her parting shot over her shoulder. “Enjoy nursing your hangover alone.”

  Audrey flinched as Lulu slammed the door on her way out. Lo rolled her eyes, then helped Audrey out the window. It was only later, when Lulu was stomping around the block, that she realized that, at some point last night, they had totally abandoned Emma.

  * * *

  “You’re a piece of shit, did you know that?” Lulu slammed the driver’s side door as she got in. Lulu interacted with the inanimate objects in her vicinity with greater force than necessary: she flung the book on her seat into the rear seat with a thwack, she smacked the driver’s seat with her back, she jerked the keys in the ignition. She left no energy in her body as potential. The car rattled with Lulu’s frustrations.

  Only a keen observer like Lo could tell that the walk had calmed Lulu down.

  “Whoa. Aren’t we Little Miss Cranky Pants this morning?” Lo was perched in the front seat, her knees up, her hands on her knees. She had actually gotten out a bottle of nail polish and was finishing up a coat on her left hand.

  With overly forceful pokes, Lulu rolled down all the windows in the car. Everything smelled like plastic and fumes.

  “I didn’t eat breakfast. Didn’t get up in time. And now I can’t eat until dinner.” That wasn’t what was bothering Lulu. Her hunger was only making everything worse, taking all her gray-scale feelings and making them technicolor.

  “Not my fault, babe.” Lo blew on her wet nails, stashing away the bottle of polish.

  Forty-five minutes earlier, she’d still been dressed as a ladybug, her makeup smeared across her face. Now she looked like she belonged on an editorial about casual brunchwear—a floaty dress, properly scuffed-up ankle boots, and neatly disheveled hair. Lulu wanted to lick her finger, reach out, and smudge Lo’s eyeliner. She wasn’t sure what point that would prove, but Lulu knew she would have felt better if she did. She took a deep breath, aware the voice that reminded her to do so was Emma’s. Poor, abandoned Emma.

  “You abandoned me in there.” Lulu’s statement held an unasked why, and Lo knew it.

  “Yelling at her won’t get what you want, Lulu. It never has.” If Lulu wanted a concession, Lo had none to offer. She’d done what she thought necessary to mitigate the damage. Lulu would have to deal with that.

  “Yeah? Then what will? She’s blacked out before, but never like this.”

  “I’m not sure,” Lo said. “I don’t think it’s up to us. She’s in charge of herself.”

  “Brilliant.” Lulu gave up on the conversation, instead focusing all her energies on the road. As she drove, a wind built inside the car, whipping air through their hair.

  Lo faced out the window, allowing the artificial breeze to jostle her further awake. When she next spoke, she didn’t turn to face Lulu. “So, are we gonna talk about how you hooked up with Anderson last night? Or are you going to pretend it never happened?”

  Lulu continued to stare straight ahead of her. But she wasn’t focusing on the road anymore. She was driving by memory.

  “I see.” Lo thrummed her fingers along the side dash. “Are you going to tell Audrey or Emma?”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.” Particularly not after the vicious judgment Lulu had already faced that morning from Audrey.

  “Fascinating.”

  “Lo, please. Just—don’t.” Lulu’s voice squeaked. She hated that little tell.

  “Your secret’s safe with me, Lulu-cat. But outright lying is so unlike you.”

  “I’m not lying,” Lulu said. But it was no good.

  “That’s a pretty big thing to forget to tell anyone, particularly ‘one of your best friends.’ And you know it.” Lo had a sardonic grin as she watched a traffic light turn green.

  Lulu gripped the steering wheel tighter. The tires squealed as she put the car back in motion. Lo thought she’d had Lulu. She thought she’d herded Lulu into a direction and would force Lulu to go through the gate, into the pen. Lulu refused to be corralled. She swallowed a lump in her throat. If she used her steadiest tone, maybe she could get the information out without it being a big deal. Facts, Lulu told herself, would ground her—plain language, nothing flowery, none of her usual hyperbole. Maybe it would make it all sound, and feel, better.

  “It’s just—I didn’t want to.”

  “What?” Lo’s voice was steady, but it was the eye of a hurricane—deceptive, threatening more menace.

  Lulu gulped. “I thought I wanted to. And then I didn’t. And he wouldn’t stop. Not totally. I mean, he stopped. Eventually.”

  Lo was so still. Lulu had never seen Lo so still. It was unsettling.

  Lulu reached for words, the ones that would set Lo in motion again. “But I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Seriously.”

  “I’m going to murder him.” Lo didn’t sound remotely squeamish about the prospect.

  “Lo, no. It’s not that bad. I mean. He didn’t, you know. Get anywhere he shouldn’t.” But Lulu, seized in a sudden flash of the memory of his fingers prying along the line of her underwear, shuddered. “It’s not a big deal. Please, Lo.”

  Finally stopped at a red light, Lulu looked imploringly into Lo’s eyes. Lo stared at Lulu for a long while. Lulu held still, a specimen under a microscope.

  Lo let out an exhale; she’d been holding her breath. “Fine. But if I see him anywhere near you, I’m not responsible for what I do.”

  Lulu laughed a shaky laugh at that. “Aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not. I take kickboxing for a reason.” Lo was dead serious. Or maybe Anderson would be dead and Lo would look anything but serious.

  “I thought that was because you said it gave you killer abs and the legs of a stuntwoman.”

  Lo smiled, like she was so proud to be capable of such great violence, that her muscles made her dangerous. “That, too.”

  “Remind me never to piss you off.”

  “You piss me off plenty.” Lo said this like she’d tell someone the time, or report the traffic, or notice it was already raining. A statement of fact.

  Lulu giggled—Lo’s honesty was a relief. “Then what keeps you from chopping my head off?”

  “I love you. Always have, always will.” Lo shrugged.

  “Well,” Lulu said, a bit startled.

  “Oh, don’t say it back if you don’t mean it, Lulu.” Lo pouted her lips and puckered her eyebrows together, transforming the pretty paint on her features into a tool for the ridiculous.

  “Shut up, Lo. You know I love you. Even if you’re a bitch and a half.” Lulu swatted at Lo.

  Lo nodded assuredly. “It’s one of my best qualities.”

  * * *

  The weather crisped. Around these parts, there was a joke that there were only two seasons—summer and August. But Lulu could always feel the shift to fall. The breeze smelled different. The rush of cool air in her lungs changed, however slightly, the way breathing felt. Just bec
ause the switches were small, well, that didn’t mean they weren’t happening. Summer was so oppressive, Lulu appreciated the subtlety of fall.

  Lulu took a deep inhale. She could see the whole neighborhood from up here where she sat. Outside her bedroom window rested the roof to the porch. It had a gentle, forgiving slope. It wasn’t too high up, only one story. As a child, she had often found herself sitting up here, taking in the neighborhood, watching cars and cats and dogs and other passersby. It was like a really boring reality TV show that she didn’t know why she watched. But there was a solitary romance in it, like she was the all-seeing eye of the neighborhood. The cooling air whipped through her hair; she heard a knock at the bedroom door. She ignored it. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts. She felt as though she hadn’t been alone for ages.

  An errant june bug bumbled across the lawn, unaware of the date. She wondered at it, solitary thing that it was. It ought to have buried itself deep and taken cover in the soil long ago, along with its brethren. But, then again, who was she to tell a little beetle what it ought to do. If it wanted to risk exposure, let it fly pathetically across the grass, all by itself. Another knock rapped across the wooden door frame, followed by the squeaking noise of her old door hinges.

  “Honey, I’m coming in.” It was her mother.

  Lulu didn’t turn around.

  “I haven’t seen you out there in forever.” She walked over and turned Lulu’s loud music all the way down. Not off, mind you, but down so low that only a hum of noise could be heard emanating out of Lulu’s speakers. “Always gives me a fright.”

  Lulu sighed. She sat—knees up, back against the windowpane—on the roof of the porch.

  “Lord, I remember the first time I saw you out there. On the roof playing with your little pony dolls, chatting up a storm like there wasn’t a care in the world. Or like a dozen mosquitoes weren’t about to fly into your room.” Her mother chattered along casually, with a friendliness and brightness that Lulu saw right through.

  “What do you want, Mama?” asked Lulu.

  “I’m remembering how you used to be. And sometimes still are.” Her hand reached through the open window and stroked the back of Lulu’s hair.

  Lulu shifted ever so slightly toward the caress. The pacing of her mother’s movements had a soothing effect on Lulu. She wondered if all mothers had this magic, or simply her own. She didn’t turn around.

  “I came up here to sit with you. Seemed like you might need company. Plus your radio was so loud it was rattling in my office downstairs. Though I think I’ll sit on your bed. I’ve never been the rooftop type.”

  “What does that make me?” Lulu turned to face her mother.

  She had perched herself on the edge of Lulu’s bed and looked newly aware that she had somehow wounded Lulu. “My little cat.”

  “I’m not a cat, I’m a girl.” Lulu’s response was hard around the edges, carried along an unsteady voice.

  “I’m afraid you’re not a girl anymore, either, darling. Not all the time, at least. You’re in between. The good news is, you’ll never feel this way again, so best take it all in now. The bad news is most people spend their lives trying to grab that feeling again.” Her mother smiled.

  Lulu wasn’t sure of her voice, so she waited a full minute before continuing on in a hoarse tone, “I know.” She hugged her knees to her chest, rocking almost imperceptibly back and forth.

  “Could you maybe come in if you’re going to do that? I don’t mean to barge in and be a nag, but I am about to have a heart attack watching you teeter around on the roof.”

  Lulu raised an eyebrow and ducked under the window frame in response. She sat on the sill, legs swinging in her own room, with her shoulders propped up by the partially opened windowpane.

  “I guess that’s something.” Her mother’s mouth slanted across her face.

  Lulu could have laughed, but she didn’t have the heart at the moment. So she sat there, swinging her legs up against her wall. Her heels thudded rhythmically. “Do I have to?”

  “Do you have to what?”

  “Grow up,” Lulu said.

  “No, you don’t have to,” her mother said quietly. “You can stay here forever, eat takeout, and listen to your father’s history lessons at the table. And I won’t lie, Lulu, I would let you. I wish I wouldn’t, but I would. But then I’d be so sad for you.”

  “Why?” Lulu startled at the look on her mother’s face. Their typical interactions were either bombastic or silly. There wasn’t much middle ground left over for earnestness.

  “You only get one life in this body. You’re going to charge headlong into everything. And I don’t mean anyone, I mean you. You were the only one of my children who bare-handedly grabbed the same hot pan twice. I know you. Don’t be afraid of yourself.”

  Lulu stared at her unmanicured toes. The edges of her toenails were crooked and uneven, and she raised her left foot up, picking at them, trying to repair them as best she could, with movements that would only make the situation worse. She remembered grabbing that pan, too. The first time hurt like all hell, though she wouldn’t have phrased it like that at the time. She remembered wondering if it would feel the same a second time. It hadn’t. It had felt infinitely worse.

  “How can I fix it? I can tell something’s wrong. Tell me how to fix it, honey.”

  “You can’t.” Lulu’s eyes glistened. She blinked several times.

  “Let me try.”

  Lulu shook her head. It had taken her fourteen years to figure out that some breaks were beyond repair. And what a rude awakening that had been.

  Her mother sighed as she stood. She grabbed her daughter’s chin delicately, and looked into her eyes, as though she was trying to read behind them. “You’ve always been my independent one. You hold so much in. You aren’t who anyone decides you are. You aren’t how anyone treats you. You have to find peace in that. It’s not easy, but you do.”

  “Mama?”

  “Yes?”

  Lulu didn’t know what to say there. She wanted to hold everything tight inside her, but she also wished she could unload the burden onto her mother. So she reached out and grabbed her mom for a hug, feeling the release in such a simple touch. Lulu cried, in a small silent way. She hoped her mother couldn’t feel her tiny sobs. Lulu wiped at her eyes and her nose while she still clung to her. She held in a sniffle. “Thank you.”

  “Honey, are you sure you don’t want to talk about whatever is on your mind?”

  Lulu shook her head to decline. “I’m all right now, thanks. I just had a bad week. I needed that. It was perfect. Thanks, Mama.”

  “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll be downstairs if you need.”

  Her mother was not one to force a confidence, and, resultantly, usually got more out of her children through her restraint rather than through assertion. Lulu, as the youngest, was too practiced in her mother’s techniques. She took advantage.

  “Sure,” Lulu said. “Mama?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, little cat.” And with that Aimee shut the door behind herself.

  9

  Collateral Damage

  During her morning break on Monday, and unconscious of her untucked shirt, Lulu walked into the library. She was looking for a book for French. Instead she found Ms. Huntley, a uniform violation, and a detention. She had been distracted, hungry, and wondering if Dane would or would not show up to class the next period. That her fears proved unfounded—Anderson hadn’t made an appearance—did nothing to quell Lulu’s uneasy feeling. His absence confirmed that he regarded her as small, discarded, and insignificant. Rejection never felt good. Rejection after what had happened that weekend seemed somehow worse.

  Lulu had planned on apologizing to Emma, but she had been conspicuously absent from her usual haunts. She was not reading in the cubby under the stairwell. Nor was Emma outside by the palm trees in the last of the fall sun. She hadn’t even gone into the ne
wspaper room to work on an assignment. Lulu could only be baffled. Emma hadn’t held a grudge in her life.

  Luckily, Emma appeared at the usual table at lunch. She sat between Audrey and Lo. But even then, Audrey managed to mangle what had been on Lulu’s mind all morning. Namely, to find Emma and apologize.

  “Emma, honey, how dreadful!” Audrey said. “I can’t believe we left you all by yourself at the party!”

  Lulu arched an eyebrow but said nothing. She was trying to keep the peace. Or at least, keep her fight with Audrey from spilling across their entire friend group. But the declaration still irritated her. As though Audrey had been conscious for the leaving. As though Audrey could exculpate herself in the same breath that she implicated Lulu and Lo. Lulu wasn’t particularly notable for her own apologies. But Audrey’s current one was a tour de force in avoiding culpability. Emma caught sight of Lulu before she’d had a chance to rearrange her face to a pleasant expression. Emma shook her head, then looked away.

  Emma’s expression gave Lulu the distinct impression that a valuable piece of information had gone missing. Lulu had no idea where she might find it, though.

  Audrey continued her verbal tap dance, equal parts flapping and flailing, as long as the rest of the lunch table would let her. “How about, to make it up to you, we have a movie fest at my house, but like an Emma-fest. So only your favorites! Sixteen Candles! And Disney princesses! A slumber party! This weekend! At my house! How fun would that be? Tell me it wouldn’t be fun. Tell me.”

  Confusion washed across Emma’s face. “It could be fun.”

  Audrey lit up with relief. “See! I knew it! It’s going to be so fun! You can’t wait!”

  At that, Lulu finally cracked. “We left you because Audrey was falling-down drunk. She nearly didn’t make it to the car. It was still horrible to forget you. Sorry.”