by Dalya Moon
Britain stopped at one of the mall directory signs, and Courtney squealed and dragged her away. She then explained we didn't use maps. The rules were: no directories, no searches on your phone, and no asking mall staff at the info kiosks. Everything else was fair game, including asking other shoppers and store staff. That was actually the point—to talk to other people and have fun.
My father says when people are on vacation, they don't feel the regular social restrictions, and they'll talk to strangers when they're at a resort in a foreign city. He says half the fun of traveling is the people you meet who are from your home country. We went to a resort in Mexico for a week in December and hung out the entire time with another family from Vancouver—people who just happened to be there.
After we left the directory, Courtney led us into a candy store, where she bought three colors of Jelly Belly candies, plus a mixed bag for eating. For her current art project, she was working on some mosaics of images made from the bright-hued beans.
She asked me, “Do you think that guy Cooper would give me some art pointers?”
Before I could answer, Britain said, “Doesn't hurt to ask.”
I bought some jawbreakers and gummy frogs—the delicious ones with marshmallow on one side.
Courtney asked me if she should pick up any treats for the guys at the restaurant while we were there, and did I have any ideas?
Britain said, “Oh, look. Salted caramel. Everybody loves those. You should get them some.”
I gave her a nasty shut up look, but it didn't catch.
Over the next hour of wandering and shopping, Britain kept doing the same thing: interrupting and preventing Courtney from talking to me. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and when we were looking at some cardigan sweaters on sale at The Gap, Courtney asked me what color she should get, and when Britain answered, I yelled, “Nobody asked you!”
Courtney gave me a dirty look, her false-eyelash-fringed eyes narrowing to little dashes. “I was asking both of you, in general. Gah! What's up your butt, Perry?”
I mumbled, “I think the orange would be nice.”
“I'll look like a pumpkin.”
“An adorable pumpkin,” Britain said.
Courtney took her armload of clothes and went to the changing rooms. Too late, I realized I'd be stuck waiting with Britain. I considered grabbing some random thing to try on, but instead, put on my metaphorical big girl panties and tried to make nice with Britain.
“Have you always had short hair?” I asked.
Cagily, she said, “Why?”
“I don't know. You have a really long neck. I mean, it's slender, in a good way. Do you ever wear long earrings? Something big and dangly would look sick on you.”
“You don't have to pretend you like me,” she said. “I'm fine with you being a hater.”
“You're fine with it, or was that your intention from the start? Because I don't think you've given me a chance to like you.”
She turned up her nose and checked the price tag on a jacket with rolled-up sleeves. “I'm used to other girls hating me.”
“I don't want to hate you, but you make it so easy.”
The tiniest smile played across her lips.
Courtney came out of the change room, clad in head-to-toe orange. She still had the purple and blue feather hair extensions in, and she looked like she belonged on a parade float for orange juice.
“That's a lot of look,” I said. “I love it.”
“I agree with Perry,” Britain said.
Courtney put her hands on her hips. “I wouldn't wear it all together, you two dummies.”
The three of us laughed together, and for a brief moment, I thought everything would be fine, and Britain would be part of our group and we'd all get along. Oh, silly me.
Britain's insanity reappeared when we found a place that did piercings and she wouldn't even set foot in the store because “the people looked freaky.”
“You mean the staff?” I asked. “What were you expecting? Doctors in white lab coats?”
The people working inside the place, called Human Art, were a rainbow of bright hair, bright tattoos, and black clothing. Noses, eyebrows, and lips glittered with piercings. Under the clothes, who knew what else.
With a new desire blossoming in my heart, I said, “Gimme,” to nobody in particular.
Courtney said to Britain, “You don't have to get pierced today, but we could at least look at jewelry and check out prices, right?”
“I'm not a freak,” Britain said. “I'm not going in there.”
“I am a freak,” I said proudly, walking in.
Chapter 12
As I walked into the body-piercing place, a girl with My Little Pony-style lavender hair smiled at me, I guess because she overheard me declare myself a freak.
I turned back and waved, motioning for Britain to follow me. “Come on, Britain, don't be a wuss. They won't bite.”
She crossed her arms and made a miserable face.
Whatever, I thought as I grooved on the nice music and the chill atmosphere inside the piercing place.
I'd never seriously considered a piercing before, but fate had led me there that day.
Without my dreadlocks, people had been treating me differently over the last few weeks. The couple at the convenience store near my house didn't watch me in the round mirrors, assuming I was shoplifting their bruised avocados. People sat next to me on buses and the Skytrain without hesitation. People who would normally talk to me, like the guy with the dreadlocks, didn't, and people who wouldn't, like nice little old ladies, did. My tips at work had been decent, but nowhere near pre-comb-out levels. Perhaps my look could use a little more pizazz, a little more freak.
“You have lovely eyebrows,” the lavender-haired girl said.
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” I said, checking out the gleaming sterling silver bars in the glass display case.
“I'm Kyle, let me know if you have any questions.”
“My brother has a friend named Kyle, a boy, though.”
Kyle rolled her eyes theatrically. “So wrong to give a boy a girl's name.”
I laughed. I liked Kyle's approach.
“Which side should I do?” I asked, pointing to the outside edges of my eyebrows.
“I recommend the same side you part your hair, so the front part of your hair doesn't get caught in the piercing.”
“Oh my god, that's so smart that you know that. I would not have thought that through.”
Sweetly, she raised her skinny shoulders and said, “That's my job.” She wore an 1980s-style black top with a wide neckline, exposing her left shoulder and a black bra strap. Her pale purple hair looked like cotton candy, and she was giving me a lesbian vibe, though I couldn't tell you why. Why did my best friend have to date nasty Britain and not someone nice, like Kyle?
Courtney, who had snuck up behind me, put her arm around my waist as she leaned forward, looking into the case. “You're totally getting a piercing, aren't you?”
“Maybe.”
In her fake Chinese accent, she joked, “Why you put holes in your head? How many boyfriends you have? I know you try to sex every day!”
“Eyebrow, yes?”
Courtney said, “A-yah!”
“Someone has to get one,” I said. “Where's your ball and chain?”
She switched back to normal Courtney mode. “Getting a cell phone charger. Whatever. She can do her own thing for a bit. We still have an hour before the movie.”
Purple-haired Kyle said, “You're both over eighteen, right?”
Over eighteen? My heart sunk for a moment before I remembered I was, indeed, over eighteen. Funny how you don't know how much you want something until it's taken away as an option.
“I'm totally eighteen,” I said.
“We could fit you both in right now.”
“Oh, not me,” Courtney said.
I thought about how much it would annoy Britain if we both got our eyebrows pierced and aske
d Courtney, “Why not?”
“Because my parents would go all disappointed-Asian on me, and not in the comical way.”
“Just me, then,” I said to Kyle, who was already handing me some forms to sign. Gosh, was Kyle was on a commission system, or just really eager to punch new holes in people?
“That'll be fifty plus tax for the piercing,” Kyle said.
Courtney pulled me back by the arm. “Maybe we should think about it,” she said to me.
I knew she wasn't holding back because of the piercing, but because she thought we should shop around for the best price. Courtney can be, uh, frugal at times.
“The price includes the jewelry,” I said, which seemed to satisfy Courtney.
The next part happened quickly.
I'd assumed I would be handed off to some other person, the Head Stabber perhaps, but instead, Kyle walked me to a quiet room at the back of the store and started pointing out the safety equipment.
Kyle said, “Promise me, if you ever see someone with a piercing gun, scream and run away.”
I laughed.
“Seriously, promise me. Guns aren't sterile because they can't go through the autoclave.”
“I promise,” I said. “No guns. Besides, I'm sure this piercing will hold me over for a while.”
Kyle pulled out a box of gloves. “Allergic to latex?”
“I don't know, I'm a virgin.”
Courtney laughed at my joke as she sat on one of the orange plastic chairs and picked up a body modification magazine.
Kyle gave me a look that said she appreciated my humor and candor, but could I shut the hell up around the pointy things.
“No allergies,” I said, sitting in the other orange chair, next to Courtney.
Kyle repeated some of the potential risks, as well as the aftercare instructions. She reminded me of an airline attendant doing the safety message, not even hearing the words coming out of her mouth.
I'm like that at work some days, repeating our five types of bread. Sometimes I mix it up and say it with the rhythm of haiku, with five syllables, then seven, then five, like this:
whole wheat, brown, rice flour,
oat bran with cinnamon crunch,
marble rye, and white
As my mind was wandering, a pinchy-looking pair of clamps, like barbecue tongs but dainty, came at my face.
“Hey-now. Is there freezing first?” I asked.
Kyle smiled and latched onto my eyebrow with the clamps. “For you? Sure. Here comes the freezing. It's going to pinch. When did you say your birthday was?”
“August—ow!”
“And you're done,” Kyle said. “Hold still while I pull the piercing through and put the end on.”
Courtney's face looked remarkably pale and shocked. “It's not even bleeding,” she said.
The area around my eyebrow started to feel warm and tingly.
Kyle dabbed at the bottom of the piercing with a Q-tip. I could see the white cotton batting turning red, as well as the shiny surgical steel ball.
“Hey, I can see it!”
“Now you'll know it's there,” Kyle said. “You can check visually, so you don't have to touch it.” She whacked my hand. “I said don't touch it.”
“Can she still make out with boys?” Courtney asked.
“Not for three months,” Kyle said.
I gasped.
“Gotcha,” Kyle said. “Yes, you can kiss boys, but nothing too hot and heavy. You'll get some crusties while the flesh tunnel is forming.”
“Flesh Tunnel is the name of my band,” I said.
Kyle gave me the shut-up look again and repeated the aftercare instructions, even though she was also sending me home with a pamphlet and a hotline phone number. I was to keep anything chemical away from the piercing, and rinse it with saline water twice a day. She said peroxide and other cleaners would actually break down the new cells trying to form, making the wound hold open longer.
As I remembered the crusty mess from when I had my ears pierced when I was twelve, and the gunky crap that came out of there due to the neglect only a twelve year old can commit, I felt grateful to still have earlobes. Not to mention my ears had been done with a dirty, potentially-diseased piercing gun.
When I stood up, stars danced in front of my face like pixies. Kyle asked me when I'd last eaten, and when I couldn't remember, she pushed me back down into the chair and pulled a kid-sized apple juice box out of the cupboard.
Even warm, it was the best apple juice I'd ever tasted.
“Looks good,” Courtney said, staring at my eyebrow.
My hand jerked up, because in the time it had taken me to drink the apple juice, I'd forgotten why I was there, and when I saw the little ball at the edge of my vision, I thought it was a bug coming to get me.
Kyle whacked my hand. “No touching.”
I admonished my hands. “Stop it, you filthy animals. Stop trying to grope me.”
“Is this the same room you do intimate piercings?” Courtney asked.
Kyle answered, “No, we have another room with a hospital-style bed, for your comfort.”
“Good to know,” Courtney said.
“Gross!” I yelled out. When I got dirty looks from both of them, I realized I was being judgmental, and besides, Kyle had about six visible piercings in her face, so she probably had a row of studs or rings all around her clitoris. Eeps!
Okay, I can barely say that word. You hear penis on the TV all the time, but you never hear the word for the thing that is fun for girls, and I don't mean vagina. No wonder guys don't know where or what it is. (Apparently.) If you don't know, google it, and don't tell anyone you heard it from me.
Speaking of fleshy lumps, when we came out of the piercing place and found Britain, she was sitting on a bench, staring up at the skylights, and looking despondent.
She opened her mouth to say something, then my adorable new eyebrow piercing caught her attention, and she closed her mouth.
“Mission accomplished,” I announced.
Britain looked straight through me as she grabbed Courtney's hand. “Sweetie, we'd better get to the theater so we can grab good seats. I know you like to sit in the optimal spot for sound.”
My eyebrow radiated angry heat and the apple juice felt sour in my stomach. I considered excusing myself and going home, but then I gave myself a pep talk about trying to be nice to Britain, and trailed along behind them like an obedient dog.
At the mall's theater, called SilverCity Metropolis, Courtney and I both jumped up and down when we saw the Hunger Games poster. The movie was opening soon and we already had our tickets.
Britain said, “It's no Battle Royale.”
My eye twitched. “Don't be a hive-mind hater,” I said. “Like you even heard of Battle Royale before Hunger Games.”
Britain ignored me, scanning the crowd around us.
“What do you think?” I asked Courtney. “In Game of Thrones, they have people battle for the entertainment of the King. Is that ripping off Battle Royale? How about roman gladiators?”
Courtney gazed at the movie poster. “Jennifer Lawrence is so pretty,” she said.
Britain released Courtney's hand. “I'll go save three seats. Get us some popcorn, no butter.”
Courtney agreed and stood on her tiptoes to kiss Britain on the cheek.
Britain still hadn't said a single word about my piercing, and it was making me crazy, so I said, “Hey, Brit, did you notice anything different about my eyebrow?”
Britain said to Courtney, “Some people will do anything for attention.”
After she'd walked away to go save the seats, I said to Courtney, “See? She just did it again. She was totally rude to me. I'm not imagining things.”
Courtney wandered in the direction of the food counter, toward the intoxicating smell of popcorn.
“Well?” I said.
“What? She was just joking around.”
I wanted to grab Courtney by the petite shoulders and shake some sen
se into her. “Jokes should be funny. She's just mean.”
“Well, Britain thinks you're smart and funny, and she's really hoping you two will be friends.”
“If she said that to you, she's lying,” I said.
Courtney ordered her food and made a pain-face over the cost of it all, so I gave her a ten to help cover the popcorn and tub-sized Diet Coke, even though I wasn't thrilled about sharing a straw with Britain and her cooties.
I said, “You could have warned me she would be here today.”
“Would you have still come?”
“Yes,” I lied.
With our snacks in hand, we made our way into the theater, which was already quite full, considering the pre-release buzz for John Carter hadn't been that great. Based on some blog posts I'd read, I had low expectations for the film.
Britain was sitting just a little to the side of center, the optimal spot for sound. There was one empty chair on her left and one on her right. I figured she'd move over and have Courtney sit in the middle, but she didn't, so I had to sit right next to her and listen to the trash-compactor noises of her eating all the popcorn and slurping away at the Diet Coke like a horse at a water trough.
Worse still, I was seated right behind a tall guy with even taller spiky hair. He must have felt me shooting eye daggers at him, because he turned around and looked right at me.
“Smart mouth waitress!” he said.
His head was backlit by an advertisement for either phones or tiny cars, but I could tell by the voice it was Cooper, Marc's artist friend.
“Perry. And you may remember Courtney and Britney—er, I mean Britain—from the art show.”
He turned around and sat up on his knees, on his theater chair, shaking everyone's hands.
“Courtney's doing a mosaic thing,” I said. “Maybe you could give her feedback sometime? As an established artist.”
“Established. Hah, good one,” he said.
Some people nearby shushed us, even though it was just the advertisements playing, not even the trailers.
“Is Marc here with you?” I asked, even though I'd already deduced neither of the guys on either side of him were Marc.
“Nope. But we should all hang out together soon,” Cooper said.