I put on my fake-happy face when I step out. I haven’t had much practice with this one ’cause I usually don’t have to fake this face, but it’s been an awful hard summer. As we walk, Lottie talks more about her dad yelling on the phone and Tootsie crying every time Mr. and Mrs. Townsend leave; then we start talking about school and I find out me and Lottie won’t even be in class together.
As we cut into the woods, we see Eddie.
“Eddie!” I shout. Then I remember what Melissa said about Eddie and me, and I look at her real quick. But she’s not looking at me; she’s looking at him, and her face has gone all soft.
“Hey, Violet!” He throws a stick into the woods and meets us on the path. “Hey,” he says to Lottie and Melissa. Even though Melissa has teased me about him, I can’t help but be pleased that mine is the only name he actually says.
“We’re going to look for shells by the bridge,” Lottie says. “Want to come?”
“Sure. Might see Alfred today.”
Before I can chime in to correct the name, Melissa says, “Who’s Alfred?”
Eddie looks at her wide-eyed. “You ain’t heard of Alfred?”
Melissa shakes her head. She listens carefully.
“Alfred is the biggest alligator we’ve spotted,” he says. I notice he don’t mention we ain’t seen Allie since last year.
“Alligator!” Melissa says. By the lift of her voice, I can’t tell if she’s excited or scared, but I choose scared for her.
I walk up and stand by Eddie. “No big deal,” I say.
Melissa’s look of awe radiates. “You mean you saw it too?”
I shrug one shoulder. “Yeah.”
She stares at us, then squints and shakes her head. “No way!”
“It’s true,” Lottie says. “Even though I didn’t see it.”
Melissa shakes her head. “How could alligators live here? There’s houses around here.”
“Well, they don’t live in houses,” I say.
Eddie shoots me a grin. I snicker too, ’cause that was pretty funny.
We scratch the dirt with sticks, looking for shells. I’ve found two white ones, but I could find those anywhere. I throw them into the river, hear them plunk. I’m hoping to find something different.
Melissa’s looking for shells like the rest of us, but she’s careful not to get her fingers or her clothes dirty. How she expects to find anything scratching so dainty-like is beyond me. Straightening up, she walks over to Lottie. Her eye makeup has sweated into the corners of her eyes.
“Do like this,” Lottie says, making a motion with her fingers. It’s official, then; they’re really friends now. But I remind myself that Lottie dragged Melissa all the way to my house, passing these very woods just to come get me. That has to mean something.
Melissa digs the black goop from the inside corners of her eyes. “Are you sure there are shells here?” she asks. “We’re not even by the ocean.”
“There’s shells everywhere,” I say. “Even mounds built out of shells.”
Melissa just looks at me. “Well, if this river flows down to the ocean, I don’t see how shells could be here.”
“Shows how much you know,” I say. I scoop a little brown shell from the dirt and hold it up for her inspection. “Besides,” I say, “this river doesn’t flow south—it flows north.”
Melissa puts her hands on her hips. “All rivers flow south.”
Lottie waves her stick. “Actually, this one does flow north. We learned it in school.”
Melissa looks like she doesn’t believe her. She starts to lean against a tree, thinks better of it, and just stands there. She drops her stick. “We’re not going to find anything.”
“Who’s crossing this bridge with me?” Eddie calls out. He’s halfway there.
Melissa almost pops off the ground. “I’ll do it!”
He looks at her, then over to me. “Violet? You coming?”
I look down to my shell digging. “Can’t,” I yell back. “I think I found a tiny shell mound.”
“I’ll still go,” Melissa says.
Eddie looks at her and shakes his head. “I guess we came for shells anyway.” He trudges back, passes her, and crouches next to me.
The dead branches of a tree near the river’s edge look like they might work better than the stick I already have. I walk over and snap one off, and something catches my eye, something floating in the water that wasn’t there before.
My breath comes out in puffs. My legs are paralyzed. A forehead floats through the river, two yellow eyes that pretend not to see me. Floating close so gently, he don’t even make a ripple. Then his ridgy back breaks through the surface. I scream and stumble back.
Everyone scrambles to me. They don’t see him right away. “What? What?” they’re all yelling. I raise my hand and point to the alligator gliding silently toward us.
My face drains.
“It’s him!” Eddie shouts. “It’s Alfred!”
Alligators run up to thirty-five miles per hour. They got eighty teeth. If they catch you, they drag you into the water and hurl you into the death roll.
Lottie grabs my arm. “Let’s go!”
I can’t move. She shakes me, but I can’t move.
“Let’s go!” She shakes me harder.
I snap out of it and turn, running behind her. Melissa’s already running down the path in front of us.
“Where you going?” Eddie yells from the riverbank. “It might be another year before we see him again!”
I don’t answer. I’m too busy escaping. Another year would be okay with me.
20
Lord Almighty, I’m about to collapse by the time we run up to Melissa’s porch. My heart is pounding harder than a jackhammer and I’m wheezing to catch my breath. Sinking to the porch floor, I glance at Lottie and Melissa. Their faces are red, and they’re breathing hard too.
The screen door pops open and Mrs. Gold steps out. “I thought I heard a bunch of elephants jumping on the porch!”
Melissa looks at her mom. She speaks between breaths. “Mom! You wouldn’t believe it! An alligator!”
Mrs. Gold’s smile drops and her eyebrows draw close together. “What?”
“In the river—we saw an alligator in the river!”
Mrs. Gold looks at Lottie and me. “Is that true? Are you sure it wasn’t a log?”
“No, ma’am,” I say. “That was a true alligator. An eight-footer, I’d say.”
Melissa nods.
Mrs. Gold frowns and puts her hands on her hips. “If there was really an alligator, I want you to stay away from that river.” She tips her head at Melissa. “You got me?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Melissa says. “I have no problem staying away from alligators.”
Lottie and me laugh a little. Well, you got to figure a city girl isn’t going to appreciate seeing your wildlife unless she’s seeing it on TV. Melissa’s mom tells us to come on in and she’s got lemonade for us. I must admit after all that running around, the air-conditioning and ice-cold lemonade are just what I need.
When we get inside, Tootsie wraps me in a big hug, and Hannah and Ashley run into the kitchen from the living room. I can hear people laughing on the TV. The girls make us tell the alligator story a hundred times while we drink our lemonade and eat cookies. The cookies are from Parker’s, and I feel good knowing that I’m eating something made by my own momma’s hands. I can’t believe it, but I’m actually enjoying myself in Melissa’s house.
Lottie’s sisters run back to the living room, then Melissa glances at the clock. “It’s almost time for Paris Heights,” she says. She looks at me. “It’s really not that bad. Are you sure you’re not allowed to watch it?”
I shake my head. “I’m not allowed to watch soap operas or anything like that.” This is like a commandment, so I never break it, unless Momma makes a special exception, like when I watched Miss America last year with Lottie.
Melissa sighs.
I get up to leav
e, but Lottie says, “Couldn’t we just miss it this one time?” She gestures toward the living room. “Besides, the girls are already watching the TV. We could do something fun without them bothering us.”
Melissa thinks on this. “Okay,” she says. We follow her upstairs to her room. “Let’s do makeovers!”
Lottie squeals and claps her hands.
Apparently, the first step of a makeover is to cleanse your face. This is just what Melissa says. She doesn’t say, “Wash your face,” like a normal person; she says, “Cleanse your face.” Then she will pick one of us to make over. So after our faces are cleansed, she studies me and Lottie, stands back, and nods. “Okay. Violet, we’re going to make you over.”
My eyebrows scrunch up. “What?” I don’t want no makeover; I’m used to the way I am. “Uh-uh,” I say. “Do Lottie.”
Melissa leans in real close to my face. I pull my head back. Standing up, she says, “You’ve got pretty eyes.” So it’s true; she really did say that before. “But you need to bring them out.”
“I don’t know. . . .”
Lottie claps her hands and bounces on the bed. “Come on, Violet, it’ll be fun!”
I look at them looking at me, and I decide that since Melissa’s giving up her soap opera, I could do this little thing for her. I sigh loudly and say, “All right.”
Melissa stands to the side of me and holds my head straight, facing her mirror. “Now take a good look,” she says. “This is the before picture.” The look she puts on her face reminds me of the look she had at the fish fry. I don’t think my before face is so bad. I stare at myself in the mirror. I look like me.
“And now”—she turns me around—“I will transform you to the full power of your beauty.” She grabs a magazine off her dresser and flips till she finds what she’s looking for. “Makeup artist for the stars! I’ll do exactly what he says.” She leans right into me. “You’ll look like a movie star!”
She starts by rubbing skin-colored cream all over my face. “This is step number one: foundation.” She’s rubbing and patting and it’s kind of relaxing. Lottie watches like this is something she should know, like she should be taking notes.
Getting transformed to the full power of my beauty takes a long time. I decide to liven up this conversation. “Can you believe that alligator?”
“Yeah, eight-footer!” Melissa says.
I laugh. “How would you know? I ain’t ever seen someone run so fast before.”
Melissa swats my head. “I heard your feet running behind me.”
I sit up straighter. “Lottie wanted me to run, right, Lottie?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“But nothing,” I say. “I would have stayed there with Eddie ’cept I had to make sure you all made it out okay.”
Melissa stops painting me for a moment and leans back. “Oh, really?”
I fold my arms. “Yep.”
Now she takes a tiny paintbrush and strokes it over and under my eyes. “I still can’t believe we saw a real, live alligator! Wait till I tell my friends in Detroit!” She gets out some blue eye shadow.
God Almighty. “Are you almost done?”
Melissa gives me a snooty look. “I am following the steps precisely. If you’d quit moving around so much, we’d get done sooner.”
“It’s looking really good,” Lottie says. I feel like a project they’re both hoping to fix.
Melissa outlines my lips and colors them in, just like my lips were a picture and she has to stay in the lines. Then she powders me up. She stands back. “Done,” she says. Lottie and her stare at me.
“Oh, my gosh,” Lottie says. “She looks beautiful.” The way she says that, it’s like I’m not even here.
“Yes, it turned out great.”
I don’t like being called “it.” I start to climb off the bed, but Melissa grabs me by the shoulders. “Wait!” She settles me back into position. “We have to do the before and after.”
Okay, I don’t even know what she’s talking about, but I go along with it just so this whole thing can be over.
“Remember what the before picture looked like?” she asks.
I roll my eyes. ’Course I do—it’s the face I look at every day in my own mirror.
“This,” she says dramatically while turning me around, “is the after picture.”
I can’t hardly believe my eyes. I can’t hardly see them for one thing, there’s so much blue eye shadow on them. My face looks like a cupcake—frosted and colorful. “I don’t like it.”
I raise my hand to wipe some of it off, but Lottie grabs my arm. “Violet, you look so pretty. You look . . . sophisticated.”
Something in her voice tells me this is true. I stare hard at the face looking back at me. Momma wears lipstick, and my own lips look like a blossom, so full and red. My blue eyes are even bluer with my lids covered in eye shadow. Even my cheeks have been highlighted with a rosy color.
Melissa stares at me. “You look like a knockout!”
“We are so ready for junior high!” Lottie says.
Melissa and Lottie beam at me. I glance at myself again. My face is shiny and brilliant. I don’t look like your regular girl walking down the street. I look like . . . like . . . God Almighty! I look like a movie star! I can hardly turn from my reflection, it’s so different from my normal self. Lottie and Melissa stare at me in the mirror. Suddenly, my legs feel like they got to get moving; I can’t stand all this sitting around and I can’t stand them looking at me with their goofy grins. “I got to go,” I say. “Momma’ll be home soon.”
Mrs. Gold stops me as they walk me out. She lays a hand on her chest. “Violet! I almost didn’t recognize you! You look beautiful!”
My face reddens, but I doubt anyone can tell through the makeup.
Melissa and Lottie see me off, waving to me from the porch like they’re the parents and I’m the kid they’re sending off. I run down the road till I think they can’t see me no more.
After I come around the bend, I hear Eddie behind me.
“Violet! You should have stayed!” he yells.
I don’t turn around, not yet.
“I saw his teeth!” Eddie’s running pounds on the dirt. “Hey, did you hear what I said?”
I wait till he’s right behind me. Then I turn around and hit him with the full power of my beauty.
He jerks his head back. His lips curl and his eyes narrow. He looks like he’s going to puke, but he just stands there, staring.
Heat stings my face. I spin around and race to my house.
“No, Violet, I didn’t mean anything!”
He’s yelling and running and catching up, but I’m already at my door, slamming it behind me. I rush to the bathroom and shut myself in. He’s banging on the front door, but I ignore him.
I grab the edge of the sink and pull myself up. I can’t believe I let Melissa do this to me. And I can’t believe Lottie’s under her spell. Well, I’m not. I see now what I really look like. Not a movie star. Not a celebrity.
I look like a clown.
Shaky black lines circle my eyes, and blue is smudged from my eyelids to my eyebrows. My lips look like tomato halves. My cheeks are slashed with red. This is not who I am. This is Melissa’s idea of who I am.
I grab a wash rag and scrub the new face off. The makeup colors stain the rag. I scrub my skin till it’s red and raw and even then it’s not enough. I practically have to scrape the makeup off with my fingernails. And I do, layer by layer, until I get back to the old me. The real me.
21
Later that night, Momma and I are sitting in the living room reading when the phone rings. I’m closer, so I go into the kitchen and pick up.
“Violet!” It’s Lottie. She don’t normally call at night, so immediately I wonder what’s going on.
“Hey, Lottie.” Then I wait to hear the big story.
But all she says is, “Did your mom like your makeover?”
I screw my face up. I know she can’t see me, but I
can’t help it. “That was clown makeup,” I say. “I scrubbed it off as soon as I got home.”
“But you looked so good!” She sounds disappointed. “I myself am planning to wear lip gloss when junior high starts.”
I sigh heavily. “Is that all you called to talk about? Makeup?”
“I just called to say hi.” Her voice sounds small.
Lord, I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings. I’m just sick of all this makeover business. But I don’t want Lottie to feel bad, so I try to think of something to say to make her feel better.
She beats me to it. “I forgot to tell you something.” When she speaks again, I can tell she’s got her hand over the mouthpiece ’cause her voice sounds close and loud. “I got a bra!”
“You what?” I shout. Then I remember Momma’s in the next room. I cup my hand over the phone too. “What?”
“The other day, me and my mom.”
I don’t know what to say. Lottie is acting like this is something to celebrate. I try to think of something encouraging to say, but all I come up with is “Well, if that’s what you want.”
“Come on, Violet.” When I don’t answer, she says, “We’re almost in junior high, and—”
I cut her off right there. “Junior high or not, I ain’t wearing that clown makeup or acting all googly-eyed over boys like Melissa does, and I’m not interested in your bra. Just count me out.”
“It’s not just that,” she says. “There’s other stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . since I’m wearing a bra and since I’m getting older, I need more privacy. I need my own room.”
I huff into the phone. “Nothing’s wrong with your room. Why’re you trying to change everything?”
“I’m not trying! Everything’s changing anyway.”
I glance through the window at her house, which she is no longer in. “Lottie—”
“That’s another thing!” she says. “I’m tired of that name. We’re going to junior high—I don’t want to be called by a name my sisters made up because they couldn’t pronounce things right.”
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