Makeovers by Marcia

by Claudia Mills

  “I was thinking,” Lizzie said in her high, breathless voice, “that there are so many old people in West Creek, who have lived so many years and have so many stories to tell, and one of these days they’ll die, and if we don’t listen to their stories, and write them down, they’ll be lost forever. So my project would be to talk to as many older people as I can and preserve everything they tell me. I thought I’d call the project ‘Saving the Stories.’”

  Leave it to Lizzie to earn Ms. Williams’s first real smile of the year.

  “That is a wonderful idea, Lizzie. There’s a growing movement to gather oral histories before it’s too late. I’ll put you down as a volunteer at West Creek Manor Nursing Home. I know the residents will be thrilled to have you take an interest in their memories. All right, Dave, what did you have in mind?”

  “Alex and I—Well, we thought—We could watch—Maybe this isn’t a great idea, but—” He wilted under Ms. Williams’s expectant gaze.

  Alex took over. “We think there’s an important need for a team to conduct research into the content of after-school television programming for children, to watch all of the cartoons that are being broadcast on various networks and monitor the amount of violence on each one, and the amount of advertising as well.”

  Marcia waited to see what Ms. Williams would say. Surely she couldn’t fail to notice that Alex and Dave’s project involved nothing more than watching hours of dumb cartoons every day, supposedly in the name of scholarship.

  “And the service dimension of your project would be? Remember, these are not intended to be research projects but service projects.”

  “We think our report itself would be an important community service,” Alex said. “We could present it at a press conference, and maybe even get some local TV coverage of our findings.”

  “No,” Ms. Williams said. It was clear that her “no” was final. “In service learning, students work with sponsoring organizations to provide community service, not on their own to conduct independent research, however valuable.”

  If “however valuable” was intended as sarcasm, Ms. Williams hid it well.

  “Marcia, what is your idea?”

  Marcia couldn’t go through with it, not after hearing Ms. Williams shoot down Alex’s proposal. “Never mind.”

  “I’d like to hear it,” Ms. Williams said.

  Why wouldn’t she let it drop? All right, Marcia would just say it and be done with it, and if everybody laughed, she’d laugh, too, as if she had meant to be funny all along.

  “I thought I’d do, well, makeovers, for people who really need them.”

  “Makeovers?”

  “Like in the magazines. Before and after? Fix up their hair, and see what colors look good on them, and try on different kinds of makeup, and do their nails.”

  Ms. Williams looked thoughtful, as if she was actually considering Marcia’s idea. “And your sponsoring organization would be?”

  “I don’t have one,” Marcia admitted.

  Ms. Williams tapped the overhead with her marker. “I’ll put you at West Creek Manor Nursing Home with Lizzie. I can’t think of any people who would be more appreciative of what you’re offering.”

  Before Marcia could protest, the deed was done. There was her name, written underneath Lizzie’s, to spend a whole entire year volunteering at the very place she had dreaded most. She turned and met Sarah’s eyes, wide with horror, then looked away. She couldn’t bear the thought that Sarah would pity her. Poor Marcia, first she gained all that weight, and then Ms. Williams signed her up for the nursing home.

  Ms. Williams continued signing kids up for projects. Sarah chose after-school tutoring, with Julius. Marcia started to wish her dozens of runny noses, but then stopped. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault that Marcia had gotten assigned to the nursing home. Sarah pitied her from friendship, not from spite.

  Dave got assigned to Community Food Share. Ethan looked pleased at getting maintenance work on the mountain trails. One by one, each kid raised a hand to choose a project and was entered on Ms. Williams’s master list.

  Except for Alex.

  “You still haven’t chosen anything,” Ms. Williams said to him.

  “There’s nothing here I want to do.”

  “Should I pick something for you, then?”

  He shrugged.

  Ms. Williams studied the list. “I only have two names so far for the nursing home. Why don’t I put you there, with Lizzie and Marcia?”

  “To do what?”

  “I’m sure the staff can find some kind of appropriate project for you. What talents do you think you can bring to this project?”

  Alex didn’t answer. Marcia knew he wasn’t about to say: a sarcastic sense of humor, clever practical jokes, excellent toilet-papering of people’s trees. He had T.P.ed her tree last year, and she still had a scrap of toilet paper saved in her treasure box.

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Ms. Williams told him. “They have a big Oktoberfest party there every year. Maybe you can help with that.”

  Marcia hoped Alex would look pleased that they were assigned to the same place, but he refused to smile. Still, their names looked nice, side by side on the overhead.

  If only they hadn’t been written side by side next to “West Creek Manor Nursing Home.”

  four

  Marcia made herself call West Creek Manor Nursing Home that day after school. She was hoping the lady who answered the phone would say, “Oh, service learning? We don’t do that program anymore. It was too disruptive for our residents to have all those young people traipsing through.” But the lady didn’t. At least she said that Marcia didn’t have to begin her service hours until the following week. And first there would be a mandatory “orientation” for all the students from all of Ms. Williams’s eighth-grade classes who would be helping that year. At the orientation, they’d watch a film and have refreshments.

  The lady said “have refreshments” as if she expected Marcia to be overcome with joy at the very thought of a plateful of store-bought sandwich cookies and a paper cup of punch. Marcia just thanked her politely and hung up. They would have to pry her jaws open with a crowbar to force punch and cookies down Marcia’s throat. She still weighed 109 after five solid days of dieting.

  “You’ve hit a plateau,” Gwennie told her over the phone. “All dieters hit one sooner or later. You don’t eat, and yet you don’t lose weight. It’s the greatest frustration of dieting.”

  Well, that and not being able to eat any of your favorite foods, such as potato chips and sour cream onion dip, and mint chocolate chip ice cream drowned in chocolate sauce.

  “But it’s impossible,” Marcia protested. “If you eat fewer calories, you have to lose weight. It’s like a law of physics. Didn’t Isaac Newton say something like that? ‘A body in motion will remain in motion.’ ‘A body that doesn’t eat will lose weight.’ I’m almost sure he did.”

  For the first time, Marcia wished she had paid more attention in one of her classes at school. Who would have thought that something as boring as her last year’s science class would be so directly related to Marcia’s own life?

  “The problem is that your metabolism changes,” Gwennie explained. “You eat less, and that sends a signal to your body to burn calories more efficiently, so you eat less and you don’t lose weight.”

  “That,” Marcia said, “is the single most unfair thing I have ever heard of in my entire life.” She had been pacing back and forth across her room with the cordless phone. Now she threw herself down onto her bed. It sounded like something a man would dream up. Isaac Fig Newton probably hadn’t had to worry about his weight. Alex ate three times as much as Marcia, she could tell from spying on him in the school cafeteria, and he was solidly muscled, with not an ounce of extra fat.

  “So what do I do?” Marcia asked. “Kill myself now?”

  “You exercise. That tells your metabolism that you need to burn up more calories, and you do, and then you can eat even
more than you did before and still lose weight.”

  Marcia considered this. She wasn’t the athletic type. She didn’t like sports where you had to hustle and sweat. For a few years in elementary school she had been on a soccer team, but by the final year the whole thing had gotten too competitive for her. She remembered one girl on the team, Ashley. It had been the biggest thing in Ashley’s life whether or not her team scored a goal. Marcia preferred sports like tennis, where you could wear flouncy little skirts to show off your long tan legs. If you had long tan legs. After her summer of convalescence, Marcia had chubby white legs.

  “Like what kind of exercise?”

  “Any kind. Walking. Walking is great. Wait. I have a brilliant idea. Are you going to be there for another ten minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  After Gwennie hung up, Marcia stayed on the bed, studying the shape of her stomach under her shorts and T-shirt. It was satisfyingly flat when she was lying down. From her nightstand she grabbed her sketch pad. Mr. Morrison had said to keep it handy at all times in case they saw something beautiful or interesting that they wanted to capture. He should have said to keep it handy so they wouldn’t die of boredom while lying in bed trying to keep their stomachs flat.

  She drew another “Barbie,” to spite Mr. Morrison, but she gave her a bigger nose than any real Barbie would ever have, and a noticeable stomach bulge. Let Barbie see what it was like not to be perfect! Let Barbie see what it was like to have the big dance inching ever closer and no invitation yet from Ken. Of course, it was only the second week of school, and Marcia knew that no boy was even thinking of asking a girl to the dance yet. It would take some serious, but subtle, manipulating by the girls to plant the seed of that thought in the dry, stony soil of an eighth-grade boy’s brain.

  “Hey”

  Marcia looked up to find Gwennie standing next to her. She had been completely lost in her silly drawing.

  “Close your eyes,” Gwennie said.

  Marcia obeyed. Gwennie put something into her hand, small and hard, a palm-sized case made of smooth plastic. “Okay, open.”

  Marcia opened her eyes. The thing in her hand looked exactly the way it felt—like a palm-sized case made of smooth plastic.

  “It’s a pedometer. My mother sent away for it once when she was on an exercise kick, but her kicks never last long, so she gave it to me.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “It counts every single step you take. You can program it so that it converts steps into miles. But it’s more fun just counting the steps.”

  Gwennie took the pedometer, clipped it onto her belt, strode several times around Marcia’s room, then clicked it open to check the count. “Thirty-seven steps.”

  “Let me try it.” Marcia pushed the reset button, clipped on the pedometer, and walked the same circuit Gwennie had walked, counting each step to herself. “Thirty-five steps.” She checked the pedometer. It said: 41.

  “So it’s not completely accurate,” Gwennie said. “It’s close enough. Your goal is ten thousand steps a day.”

  “A day?” Marcia yelped. “Ten thousand? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “They add up fast. Walk to school instead of letting Dad drive you. Help with yard work. Walk over to Sarah’s house instead of calling her on the phone. You’ll get to ten thousand in no time.”

  Marcia made a face. Gwennie laughed. “Calculus is calling me.” Gwennie continued counting steps out loud as she walked out of Marcia’s room: “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty …”

  As Gwennie’s car pulled out of the driveway, Marcia laced up her sneakers. She couldn’t get to ten thousand steps today, starting so late in the day, but she could get to three thousand maybe. That would be three thousand more than nothing.

  Once outside, she thought about where to go. She wasn’t in the mood for Sarah. Sarah’s favorite topic these days was Marcia’s weight and whether or not it had changed in the past hour—and how sure she was that Travis Edwards was going to ask her to the October dance.

  Marcia turned her footsteps in the opposite direction from Sarah’s house, fully aware that the road stretching off that way led right past Alex’s cul-de-sac.

  She walked briskly, not that the pedometer knew or cared how rapidly she accumulated her total number of steps. Although she was dying to check it after every block, she vowed not to peek until the entire walk was over.

  He probably wouldn’t be there anyway. He was on the middle-school track team, so he was most likely off running. No wonder he could eat as he did and not gain weight.

  Maybe she’d bump into him while he was finishing up his run. But then he’d be with the rest of the team and wouldn’t be able to do more than grunt to acknowledge her presence. Marcia practiced the small smile she would give in response to the grunt. It had to convey pleasure at the sight of him, but some measure of superior amusement, too. Boys! Ridiculous creatures! But this particular one is undeniably quite cute. That was a lot to put into one small smile. But Marcia knew she was equal to the task.

  Then, all at once, there he was, coming up from behind her, not running with the team, but all alone on his bike.

  “What are you smirking about?” he asked, braking neatly to a full stop by her side.

  There were few things more embarrassing than being caught practicing the perfect smile. Marcia felt herself blushing. “Nothing.”

  He accepted her answer. “Where are you off to?”

  Marcia felt her blush deepen. “Nowhere. I’m just out for a walk.”

  “Ankle doing okay?” Alex sounded uncomfortable now.

  Marcia remembered something she had read in an advice book on dating. It said the woman should always make the man feel masculine, by stressing how big and strong he was, even if she was trying to tease or insult him. If you had a fight—and some playful little spats kept a relationship interesting—you should make sure you called him such names as “big brute” and “hairy beast.”

  “Well,” Marcia said, striving for a lighthearted tone, “it would be doing better if some big brute hadn’t practically attacked me on the trail.”

  Was that too much? “Big brute” sounded pretty absurd when it was actually said out loud to someone, rather than printed on a page in a book.

  Alex winced. “Aw, Marcia …”

  One “big brute” remark per conversation was probably enough. “It’s basically fine. I can play tennis, and dance, and everything.” She took pains not to emphasize the word “dance.” But it seemed to hang in the air between them.

  Speaking of dancing, the eighth-grade dance in October? You don’t want to go with me, do you? If only Alex would say it.

  “Did you call the nursing home yet?” he asked.

  Oh, well. The dance was still almost six weeks away. Marcia nodded. “We don’t have to start until next week. After this orientation. We have to watch a movie. And have refreshments.”

  Alex’s face brightened. Marcia would let him eat her share of cookies. The way to a boy’s heart was through his stomach, right? She tried to think of something else to say so he wouldn’t pedal away.

  “Well, see you at school tomorrow,” Alex said.

  Marcia gave him a smile, intended to say: I want to go to the dance with you, you hairy beast, so hurry up and ask me, because if someone else asks me first I’ll go with him instead. But he was gone before she had a chance to complete the message.

  No longer in the mood for a walk, Marcia turned around and headed home. She checked the pedometer the minute she was inside the house: 1,385 steps. Plus one halfway-significant conversation.

  Shortly after art class began the next day, Mr. Morrison strolled around the room, glancing through students’ sketchbooks, looking over their shoulders at the watercolor still lifes they were attempting. In the front of the room he had set a single red apple, positioned on a white plate. It wasn’t exactly the most inspirational thing Marcia had ever been asked to draw.

>   “Still doesn’t mean dead,” Marcia heard him say to one student. “That apple isn’t made out of plastic. It’s a real piece of fruit that I picked myself yesterday from a real tree.”

  Marcia greatly doubted that. Mr. Morrison didn’t look like the apple-picking type. On her own paper, she dutifully painted a round thing and colored it a nice bright red. There. One apple.

  “You,” Mr. Morrison said to her. “What’s your name?”

  “Marcia. Marcia Faitak.”

  “All right, Marcia Faitak. Name three ways in which an apple is different from a red-colored tennis ball.”

  What was she supposed to say to that? When she didn’t answer, he said, “One, an apple is not perfectly round. Two, an apple was not mass-produced in a factory. Three, you can eat an apple.”

  Did he think he was being funny? Or did he just like to hear himself talk in his bored, sarcastic way? Marcia would have come up with a different list. An apple is sweet, juicy, and delicious. An apple has eighty calories. An apple is one of the few snacks a dieter is allowed to have.

  “See if you can draw something edible,” Mr. Morrison said. Then he was off to the next student’s desk.

  Well, Marcia had to admit that her apple did bear a striking resemblance to a red-colored tennis ball. If it was even that interesting. It was more of a red-colored round thing.

  All right. If Mr. Morrison wanted her to draw something edible, she’d draw something edible. Marcia stared at the juicy, red, mouth-watering apple glistening on the white ceramic plate on Mr. Morrison’s table, and dipped her brush back into her paint. But what she really wanted to do was snatch the apple off the plate and take one great big bite out of it.

  five

  The orientation at West Creek Manor was held the following Tuesday at 7 p.m. Marcia had thought about e-mailing Alex to see if he wanted a ride, but it seemed too much like chasing him—probably because Marcia’s reason for doing it was to chase him. Instead she rode to the nursing home with Lizzie.