“It’s okay, you can say it. I’m fat. It’s not like it’s a secret.”
“You’re not fat, Brooke,” Jules said, sitting down next to her at the table and touching her arm gently. “You’re a little plump. ‘Round’ is a nice way to put it. What about ‘Rubenesque’? That’s a good word.”
“That would be like calling Alexis mischievous or playful when we both know she’s just plain trouble.”
“Do you want any help with the running?” Jules asked hesitantly.
“Do you want any help writing your book?” Brooke countered.
“Fair enough,” Jules said. She stood up and went back to chopping salad vegetables.
Brooke made a promise to herself: Tomorrow she would run two miles if it killed her. She stifled a bitter laugh at the thought, and wondered if her mother had a clause in her will for what would happen if one of them died. Knowing Juliana, she probably did.
Lexi
Lexi tiptoed around the room, looking for her clothes. Her head was pounding and the place was a disaster. She found her skirt wadded in a ball near the door and one boot in a corner. The bare mattress sat on the floor, so there was no sense trying to look under it. She had only fuzzy memories of the night before and wasn’t even sure whose house she was in. It might be Brad’s brother’s, but if it was, where was Brad? And who was the guy sprawled out naked on the mattress? She leaned over him and peered in close. His neck was covered in tattoos and he had about a dozen piercings up the ear that she could see. She didn’t recognize his face at all. She hoped it wasn’t Brad’s brother. She remembered Brad saying he was a dick.
She’d woken up because she had to pee, but now that she was up and mostly lucid, she got the feeling she should probably get out of this skanky place.
She grabbed a dirty towel from the floor and was about to wrap it around herself, but the stench of it—coupled with the hard, crusty patches that met her fingers when she picked it up—made her drop it. Fuck it, she thought, swinging open the bedroom door and walking buck naked down the hall in search of clothes and clues.
There were naked, passed-out bodies in every room she passed, sometimes three or four to a bed. The living room was a post-orgy scene of scrawny limbs and limp dicks and tramp stamps and enough drug paraphernalia to open a head shop. Lexi scanned the comatose faces, looking for Brad or Ryan or anyone at all who looked even a little bit familiar, but they were all complete strangers.
“Goddamn it,” she muttered under her breath. She had no idea where she was or where her other clothes were, and she was so ravenous she was shaking. She walked to the refrigerator and opened the door, but there was nothing in it but a few shriveled-up slices of pizza covered in a spongy layer of mold. She slammed the door.
“Keep it down, you stupid bitch,” someone shouted from somewhere in the house.
“Go fuck yourself,” Lexi shouted back. She stomped into the closest bedroom and fished around until she found a guy’s button-down shirt. She put it on and tied the tails together high under her boobs. The three bodies in the bed didn’t move. She coughed quietly, a test; still nothing. She kept her eyes on the bodies as she walked carefully to a heap of clothes and found a pair of pants with a wallet in the pocket. Twenty-two bucks. Score. She tucked it in the shirt pocket and tiptoed out, then did the same thing in two more bedrooms. Ninety-one bucks richer, she went back to the bedroom where she started to retrieve her skirt. She cleared another sixty-five dollars there. She was pissed about the boots—they were one of two pairs of shoes she owned—but she wasn’t about to hang around this hellhole any longer. Plus, she had more than a hundred fifty dollars now. She grabbed a pair of scratched-up sunglasses off the kitchen counter and stumbled outside, barefoot, into the midday sunlight.
She walked along the strange street, trying to get a sense of where in the world she was. If Lexi knew anything, it was that she couldn’t call Jules to come get her again. Call Jules. Shit, her phone. Where was her phone? Had she left it at that house? Or in Ryan’s truck? Or at Rusty’s? She had no idea. She turned around now to retrace her steps only to realize that she had no idea what the house she’d just left looked like or even which direction she’d come from. There was no use trying to find it, especially when her phone might not even be there.
From the looks of the houses around her, she guessed that she was on the north side of town, not far from Rusty’s. If she could get there, somebody would probably know how to get in touch with Ry and Brad, who hopefully had her phone. She realized she didn’t even know their last names or their numbers—she’d always just dialed them directly from her contacts. If she’d had her phone she might even have called Jules. Not for a ride, God forbid, but just so her Nazi big sister wouldn’t totally freak out on her ass when she did come home. But she realized when that thought crossed her mind that not only did she not even know her oldest sister’s married name, she didn’t know a single phone number in the world other than her own; not Jules’s, not Brooke’s, nobody’s. Was that normal? Sad? A sign of something? Lexi had no way of knowing.
It took her a good four hours of walking before she made it to Rusty’s. Her feet were black and blistered but at least she’d finally eaten something. She’d found a cheap greasy spoon and inhaled a cheesesteak sandwich and fries and a gigantic fountain Coke. It was heavenly. She’d even left the right amount of money on the table—plus a pretty decent tip—when she left. She was surprised at how nice it felt to actually walk out of a restaurant and stroll casually down the street instead of sneaking out and trying to disappear immediately into the crowd. She wondered if she’d miss the occasional thrill of dine-and-dash when she was filthy-fucking-rich. She decided that if she did, she could always do it just for fun. She might even go back and sneak a crisp hundy onto the table later, just to fuck with the server.
After Lexi washed her feet and her face in Rusty’s grimy restroom, she counted her stolen money. A hundred and forty-three dollars left. She could sit at the bar and eat and drink for the next three days and not have to bolt out when the bill came or suck up to a disgusting drunk for another round. Sure, she had no idea where she was going to sleep, and she was exhausted and hungover and might never see her phone again, but at least there was that.
Jules
Jules held her breath and said a silent prayer as she stood outside her office, even though she knew from painful experience that asking God for anything was futile. Besides, she would have heard Lexi come in because she hadn’t slept more than ten minutes all night. She’d tossed and turned and paced and fretted, and poor Shawn had been a wreck when he left for his fifteen-hour day at five o’clock this morning. Now she pushed open the office door. The air mattress sat undisturbed on the floor against the wall, neatly made (by Jules) and exactly as it had been the fourteen other times she’d checked it.
“Goddamn her,” she muttered to herself as she pulled the door closed.
“She’s probably fine.” Brooke was on the couch, sipping a glass of murky water with a lemon slice floating on top. Jules was painfully aware of the fact that Brooke didn’t want her help or advice directly, so she’d begun casually leaving magazines lying around, opened to various diet and fitness articles. A recent one had called water spiked with lemon and cayenne pepper “one of the easiest, most effective tools in your weight-loss arsenal.” Jules had practically had to sit on that page to make it stay open, but it had worked. Brooke had been drinking the disgusting concoction daily. Jules had been glad her sister had taken the bait, otherwise the $4.50 she’d spent on lemons and pepper would have been a total waste.
“She’s just so selfish and irresponsible,” Jules grumbled, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“I know,” Brooke said.
“Do you think I should call her?” Jules asked.
“It’ll probably make you feel better to know she’s okay,” Brooke said.
Jules dialed Lexi’s number. It ran
g and rang. Just as she was about to hang up, a gruff male voice answered.
“Um, hi, I’m looking for Alexis?” Jules said, her voice rising in question.
“I don’t know who that is,” the guy said, “but if it’s the bitch who stole my sunglasses and all my money, you can tell her I plan to call my cousin in China today and talk to him for about six hours before I throw her fucking phone off the bridge.”
Before Jules could process his words and formulate a reply, he was gone. She set her phone on the counter and scratched her head.
“That didn’t sound promising,” Brooke said. “What did he say?”
Jules repeated what the guy who had answered Lexi’s phone had said.
“We need to find her,” Brooke said, jumping up. Jules was positive she’d never seen Brooke move so quickly in her life, at least since she’d been staying with her. And because of Lexi, no less. Maybe she and Brooke weren’t that different after all.
“She’d do it for us,” Brooke insisted. “Remember how she went totally nuts about Jake having my car? She didn’t miss a beat. She was all, ‘I’m going to go over there and kick his ass RIGHT NOW.’ And then she did. Well, I sort of did, but she started it. That was so awesome, wasn’t it?”
Jules smiled at her sister. “I’ll deny I ever said this, but yeah, that was pretty awesome.”
“So do you want to do it? Go find this guy who has her phone?” Brooke looked a little bit more excited than she should have, if you asked Jules.
“For one thing, Alexis lives for any excuse to kick anyone’s ass, so don’t get too crazy with the warm-and-fuzzies over there,” Jules reminded her. “Secondly, I don’t think you and I together could take out a fifth-grade boy, no less some probable cokehead; no offense. And third, where would we even start? How do we know she’s even in town? She could be anywhere on the entire planet. She could have jumped in some stranger’s car and be on the other side of Lake Havasu by now. She could be in a hotel room or a bar or someone’s house or their secret underground dungeon or at the bottom of some random pool.”
“Well, we can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Brooke said.
“Wait, shouldn’t you be at work?” Jules asked, suddenly remembering it was a weekday.
“I called in sick when I saw that she never came home. I didn’t want you to have to deal with that alone.”
Jules stopped scrubbing at an invisible spot on the kitchen counter.
“You did?” she asked.
Brooke nodded.
“That was really sweet of you,” Jules said.
“No problem,” Brooke said. “And also lice is going around the school like crazy right now and a bunch of my kids have it. I’m sure it’s just psychological but my head’s been super itchy, so I was going to go get some of that chemical shampoo and just try to knock it out sometime this week anyway. I figured it might as well be today.”
“Lice? You think you have lice?” Jules shrieked.
“I might not.” Brooke shrugged. “Whenever it’s going around I always totally think I have it, but I’ve only gotten it like five or six times.”
“Brooke, my head has been driving me crazy for three days. I scratched it until it bled last night. I thought it was stress. Will you look?” She sat down at the table and Brooke stood up and pulled her hair away from her part.
“Oh yeah,” Brooke said. “You’re infested, all right.”
“I’m infested? Brooke, that’s disgusting! What do I do?” Jules was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Brooke insisted. “The kids love it when they get it, because the home lice kits come with a box of jelly beans to shut them up while their parents comb them out. I’ll pick up some jelly beans when I get the shampoo.” She tried to rub her sister’s shoulders, but Jules jerked away.
“Go get it now,” she barked. “And hurry.”
“You’re just freaking out because you don’t have kids and this is all new,” Brooke told her. “After you do the hazmat shampoo three or four times you just wrap up your hair in oil for a few weeks and it smothers the bugs and the eggs. Then you have to pick all the dead ones out with this little metal lice comb because they stick to the hair even after you shampoo. The combs are kind of expensive, too—like twenty bucks, I think—but you can borrow mine if you want. Oh wait, you’re not supposed to share those. Oh, and you have to wash all of your sheets and pillows and blankets and towels in really hot water a couple times a week, and put all of your brushes and combs and stuff like that in the freezer. There’s also this spray they make for your car. Hang on, I have a sheet that explains everything in my school bag . . .”
Jules wanted to vomit. Or shave her head. She’d vomit on her own shaved head if she thought it would help. She felt dirty and violated and worried and frustrated and very, very itchy.
When Brooke got back from the drugstore with the insecticide shampoo, Jules locked herself in the bathroom and took the longest shower of her life. She lathered and rinsed and repeated and scrubbed and scrubbed and she didn’t even care about the money she was pouring down the drain. She was stuck mothering her two irresponsible, apathetic sisters and she was infested with lice, and from the looks of it, only one of those things was ever going to change.
Brooke
Brooke had the whole setup arranged by the time Jules got out of the shower: clear bowl of water, comb, magnifying glass, big cup of warm salad oil and spray bottle with watered-down conditioner to make the combing easier. Oh, and the movie theater–size box of jelly beans. She hoped Jules didn’t like the red or green ones, because she’d already picked all of those out and eaten them. It wasn’t her fault; Jules had been in that shower forever.
Jules slumped into the kitchen chair Brooke had pulled out for her and Brooke went to work, first massaging the warm oil into Jules’s scalp. She tried not to picture the little bugs on her sister’s head drowning and gasping for air, and hoped that the massage part might help Jules relax a little bit. Brooke worked methodically through her sister’s head, one minuscule section of hair at a time, and Jules swayed gently in her chair with each tug of the comb. For a few minutes, she even forgot about Lexi.
“Will you check me when I’m done?” Brooke asked. She popped an orange jelly bean into her mouth and grimaced. Why did they even bother making the other colors when reds were the only good ones? Greens were okay in a pinch, but if she were in charge, it would be an all-red-jelly-bean world.
“I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” Jules mumbled, half-asleep.
“They look like this,” Brooke said, holding the bowl of water in front of her sister’s face.
“I don’t see anything,” Jules said.
“Oh, sorry, you have to look through the magnifying glass,” Brooke explained. She handed Jules a tiny plastic child’s magnifying glass and watched as her sister peered into the bowl.
“All I see are these tiny flesh-colored dots floating on top of the water,” Jules said.
“That’s them,” Brooke explained.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jules said.
“My hair will be easier than yours because it’s dark,” Brooke insisted.
“Do I have a choice?” Jules asked.
“Only if you don’t want to be passing these things back and forth forever,” Brooke told her.
After Brooke had gone over Jules’s entire head with a fine-tooth comb—in the most literal sense possible—twice, she wrapped tinfoil around the whole oily mess.
“Is this really necessary?” Jules asked, patting her tin-covered head.
“It keeps the oil from getting everywhere, plus it helps in case I missed one—which I doubt I did—so it can’t jump or crawl off,” Brooke said. “But wait, I’m not done.” She rolled a long length of foil into a pointy cone, and then tucked it into a fold on top of Jules’s he
ad. Brooke reached for a hand mirror and handed it to Jules.
“You’re a unicorn!” she said, crying with laughter.
“This just keeps getting better and better,” Jules said, shaking her head but smiling at her sister.
“You ready to do me?” Brooke asked.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Jules told her.
Jules worked her way around Brooke’s head, massaging and combing and picking and drowning each tiny critter and tinier egg she found in the bowl of water.
“I think we’re good here,” she finally told Brooke, putting the finishing touches on her sister’s tinfoil unicorn hat. “How long do we leave the foil on?”
“The longer the better,” Brooke said.
They couldn’t look at each other without laughing.
“I’m going to run that race,” Brooke said out of nowhere. “Just so you know. I even have one picked out, the SoCal Surfside Half-Marathon. It’s in December, so the timing is perfect. You’re probably halfway finished with your book, I know. And I can’t speak for Lexi, obviously, but I’m not going to be the one to ruin this for all of us, I promise.”
Jules looked down at her lap. “I haven’t even started,” she said. She kept her head bowed low and picked at the skin around her fingernail.
“You haven’t?” Brooke gasped. “It’s already May!” She saw the guilt on Jules’s face and tried to backpedal. “Hey, that’s okay,” she added hastily. “You’ll do it. I mean, won’t you? Why haven’t you started?”
“Because I don’t have a story,” Jules said. She looked inconsolable.
“Are you serious? Anything is a story. You need to come to work with me for a day. My kids can spend forty-five minutes telling me about the potato bug they squished on the sidewalk.”
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