White Elephant

by Julie Langsdorf

  After school today Lindy had decided Jillian needed new clothes. Her clothes were crap. She needed to work on her brand. She’d grabbed Jillian by the arm and pulled her downstairs, to the kitchen, where Kaye sat thumbing through a catalog. “We are going to the mall right now, Mom. We have work to do!”

  Kaye seemed as eager as Lindy. “What fun!” Jakey was on a playdate, so it was perfect. “Just perfect.”

  “You’re just dropping us off,” Lindy said.

  Kaye’s expression slid from happy to sad, like a pair of emojis. “I’ll just walk in with you. I have a little shopping of my own to do.”

  Jillian wished Kaye would stand up for herself, but who was she to talk? She was just as afraid of Lindy as Kaye was—not to mention her fear of her own parents. A not-afraid person would have told her mother she was going to the mall, but that would have meant admitting she was friends with Lindy, something Jillian wasn’t prepared to do. She’d been sneaking over to the Coxes’ house every day after school for over a month now, always afraid her mom would see her going in the front door, or running around back to Lindy’s fort in the White Elephant. And what if her mom ran into one of the teachers who ran the after-school clubs? She would be sent to her room forever.

  Jillian, confirming that the coast was clear, followed Lindy and Kaye toward the escalator. Was the stress of sneaking around worth the thrill of being at the mall with Lindy? Jillian wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t as if she could actually buy anything. She’d spent all of her allowance on Christmas presents for her parents and Candy. Lindy, on the other hand, had her own credit card. Talk about cool.

  There were a lot of cool things about Lindy Cox. A lot of creepy things, but enough cool things to offset them. Having brand-name clothes and your own bathroom was cool. So was having a mom who kept up with the fashion trends and liked the same music you did.

  Spying on neighbors with binoculars fell in the creepy category. Dancing in your bra and panties to YouTube videos also was creepy, or what Jillian’s grandmother would have called “unwholesome.” Then there was the fort, which was the best place ever. Jillian always felt as though she was going to fall through one of the planks or step on a nail and get tetanus, but it was worth it. The other day they’d had a séance and brought back the ghost of Lindy’s grandfather. They both had felt his presence in the room.

  Lindy called Jillian her BFF, her best friend forever. “Am I yours?” she would ask, and Jillian would, reluctantly, say yes. Was it possible to have two BFFs? One in France and one in Maryland? For a while Jillian had been suspicious about why Lindy was being so nice to her, but over time she’d started to ease into the novel concept that Lindy liked her for her. It was flattering to have been chosen—and exhausting at the same time.

  Lindy was unpredictable. For a while, she would be nice, fixing Jillian’s hair so it would look cooler, or giving her a makeover, then, all of a sudden she’d blow up, and go up to her room and lock Jillian out. Like the other day after Jillian mentioned, in front of Kaye, that she usually got straight As. Lindy screamed like a tea kettle, then left Jillian and Kaye alone in the kitchen, where she and Kaye talked about horoscopes and drank diet soda till Lindy dragged Jillian upstairs.

  There was no chance Jillian was going to get straight As this semester. She might even fail social studies. Mrs. Baxter, the social studies teacher, called Lindy and Jillian in over lunch one day to ask them whether they had made the Greek temple by themselves. It was obvious that they hadn’t. It was built of measured, stained, and sanded dowels and sheets of plywood spray-painted to look like stone. It looked like it should be in a museum. The man who made house models for Lindy’s dad’s company had built it—but that didn’t keep Lindy from swearing that they’d done it by themselves. She described cutting the wood at her father’s workbench and sanding with squares of sandpaper. Mrs. Baxter had said she was going to call their parents to verify the story, but she hadn’t so far. Maybe Jillian should turn herself in before they were found out; she could leave an anonymous note on Lucy’s bulletin board: Jillian and Lindy did not make the Greek temple.

  “Ta-da!” Lindy said. They were standing in front of a store Jillian had never been in before. Of course she hadn’t. It was a store for teenagers, and she was only twelve. When she went shopping with her mother, they went to the Girls 7–16 section of the department store, where identical clothes of assorted sizes hung on plastic hangers in tightly packed rows. The music was soft, classical, or an instrumental version of a song that had been popular a few years before.

  But this was something different. This seemed to be not just a place where teenagers shopped but where they lived. There were hammocks and record players, tables with stacks of shirts with shoes below, as though the teenagers had just kicked them off on their way over to the big pillows and scented candles. Bras in Easter egg colors hung on the wall like art, and dresses relaxed on wooden hangers in small but tasteful groups. The music was loud and peppered with words kids got in trouble for saying. Everyone was older, and wore denim and black and impractical shoes, and looked as if they had left their lives with their parents behind for something much, much better.

  Lindy moved to the music as they walked through the store, smiling at Jillian, and Jillian tried to smile back. Lindy pointed to short dresses and shorter skirts, outfits that looked too small for a grown person but too revealing for a child. “You’d look so cute in this,” she said, picking up a tube top. Jillian imagined coming down to breakfast in a shirt that looked like a sock with the foot cut off.

  Lindy started pulling T-shirts out of folded piles. She looked at them, then tossed them aside. Jillian tried to fold them again, but Lindy unfolded them faster than she could neaten them up. She handed Jillian a heap of sweaters and leggings and dragged her toward the changing room.

  The girls stood back-to-back as they peeled off their clothes and tried on the new ones. Jillian found a price tag on a light blue sweater that Lindy had picked for her. Nearly sixty dollars! “I don’t have any money,” she whispered.

  “I do.”

  “I can’t take your money.”

  “Why not? If I give it to you? It’s a Christmas present. Merry Christmas.”

  “It’s too much.” She’d gotten Lindy a pack of three lip glosses for Christmas—one strawberry, one grape, and one lime.

  “It’s fine.”

  Jillian frowned, struggling with what to do.

  “Jill. My parents are loaded. Do you want it or not?”

  Jillian wanted it. “That’s so nice of you.”

  They waited in line to pay alongside wooden bins filled with vegetable-scented face masks, glass vials of flowery perfume, and lipsticks in shades from pink to black—treats as tempting as the candy in the checkout aisle at the supermarket. Was it okay to draw on the back of your hand with a lipstick? To paint a stripe of nail polish on the side of the bin to see what the color looked like? Jillian put caps back on as Lindy tossed the treasures back.

  When they finally got to the register, Lindy stuck the credit card in the reader as if it was nothing, handing Jillian the bag with the sweater in it. Jillian would have to throw out the bag, of course, which felt wasteful since it was made of fabric instead of paper. Maybe she could wear the sweater home. Maybe her mom would think it was just an old one, though she doubted it. Her mother knew what Jillian owned better than she did. “I don’t have any sweaters,” Jillian might yell on her way out the door on a chilly day, and her mother would rattle off all of the sweaters she owned, going back to third grade.

  “That was so generous of you, Lindy. My present is a lot smaller.”

  Lindy took her hand, which was so cute. Anyone who saw them would know that Lindy was her friend. She must be a little special to have a friend as cool as Lindy. They stopped in front of the Piercing Pagoda.

  “Today’s your lucky day,” Lindy sang.

  Jillian laughed.

  “Which pair do you want? You have to get gold or your ears will get
infected or something gross.”

  “Oh, I’m not. I can’t.”

  “You can’t?”

  “My mom says—”

  “Are you going to let your mommy tell you what to do your whole life, Jilly Billy? What a sad life that would be.” Lindy called the woman behind the counter over. The woman wore a white lab coat, as if she were a doctor. “She’d like to have her ears pierced,” Lindy said.

  The woman looked at Jillian. “Is that right?”

  All of the advice she’d ever gotten about peer pressure wafted out of Jillian’s head, leaving her powerless. She nodded yes.

  “You’re going to need your mom’s consent.”

  “She’s sixteen. She just turned it,” Lindy said, but the woman shook her head no.

  So Lindy texted her mom, who came over from another part of the mall laden with shopping bags. She winked as she signed the form giving permission for “her daughter” to have her ears pierced. Jillian smiled back, hoping Kaye would understand it was the smile of a girl being held hostage, but she didn’t. What was going to happen to her when people started pressuring her to drink or do drugs? She’d become an addict, out on the street with a bottle in a paper bag all because she couldn’t say no.

  She held both Kaye’s and Lindy’s hands as the woman came at her with the big gun. They all promised it wouldn’t hurt, but it did. She yelped and her eyes welled, and then they did it on the other side. Lindy sent her mother off again and dragged Jillian to the food court.

  They sat at a metal table with pink milkshakes, the smells of hamburgers and cinnamon buns floating around them, fear seizing Jillian’s body. She was so going to be in trouble. Hanging out at the White Elephant, skipping after-school activities, and going to the mall without permission suddenly looked like minor offenses—jaywalking—compared to the crime she’d just committed. Her parents were going to kill her—she, who had never done anything worse than reading under the covers with a flashlight, until this fall. It wouldn’t matter to them that it was Lindy’s fault. She felt her ears throb, pulsing reminders that she was bad.

  “Check this out.” Lindy tore the end of the paper wrapper off one of the extra straws she’d taken from the smoothie counter. She put the straw in her mouth and blew the paper at a little girl a few tables over. The girl touched the side of her head and looked around, not sure what hit her. Lindy laughed out loud.

  What if the needle wasn’t clean? What if she got a staph infection? What if she got AIDS? If her parents didn’t kill her, a disease would.

  “I got my ears pierced when I was four. I wouldn’t leave the mall till my mom got it done for me. Then I ran all over the place showing everyone,” Lindy said. She aimed a straw wrapper at a boy about their age. “I’m glad you did it. It’s like we’re sisters now.”

  “They’re never going to trust me again,” Jillian said.

  “Trust is for losers.” Lindy sent another wrapper straight into the air. “Here, I got you something. A present for being so brave.” Lindy took a little vial of perfume out of her purse.

  “That’s so nice.” Jillian uncapped it and sniffed.

  “Crap!” Lindy cried. “It’s him!”

  She grabbed Jillian’s cheeks and turned her head to the right, to show her Mark, sitting alone between Cinnabon and the Panda Café. His binder was open on his table and he was tapping his phone like crazy, obviously playing a game. Jillian’s ears began to ache.

  “Go say hello to him,” Lindy said.

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s just go find your mom, Lin. It’s getting late.”

  “But he’s your friend.”

  “I know . . .”

  Lindy narrowed her eyes. “He is, isn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “So, you don’t want to say hello to a friend?”

  “Not right now . . .”

  “Why?”

  “I just . . . He looks busy.”

  “You made out like you and he were best friends and now you won’t even go talk to him?”

  “Not best friends.”

  “You’re such a liar.” Lindy looked disproportionately disappointed.

  “What?” Jillian said, realization raining down on her.

  That was it. She ought to have guessed. How stupid was she? It wasn’t her Lindy was interested in: it was Mark. Lindy had become friends with her to get to Mark.

  “Come on.” Lindy grabbed Jillian’s wrist. Jillian didn’t dare say no. Lindy might freak out, abandon her at the mall. What would she do if that happened? Call an Uber? Her mom had gotten her the app in case of an emergency. What kind of emergency? Was this an emergency?

  “Hey,” Mark said when they were standing next to him. He looked up from his game for an instant before looking back down again.

  “So what’re you up to, Mark?” Lindy said, smiling to show her professionally whitened teeth.

  “Homework. While my mom gets Christmas stuff,” he said, and Lindy laughed.

  “Homework? Liar. Hey, Jillian just got her ears pierced.”

  He nodded, his eyes still on his game.

  “Doesn’t she look good?” Lindy pinched his arm as if they were friends. “She wasn’t supposed to. Boohoo, huh?”

  He tapped on the screen wildly for a few seconds, then looked up, smiling. “I won!”

  “See her ears?” Lindy said.

  He looked up. “What?”

  “My parents are going to kill me,” Jillian said.

  “I’ve done things my mom would kill me for, but so far so good,” he said.

  “Like what?” Lindy said.

  He shrugged. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, if you know what I mean. They might even help.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Jillian said, but Mark had started a new game.

  “I’m bad too,” Lindy said, nodding.

  “Yeah?” he said, not looking up.

  He liked Lindy. That was obvious. Boys liked girls who were daring and blond. Jillian might as well go now. Lindy had gotten what she wanted from Jillian. She no longer needed her. Jillian took the perfume out of her bag and sniffed it again.

  “Can I see it?” Lindy said, putting out her hand. She sprayed perfume on Mark’s arm.

  “Hey!” he said.

  Lindy sprayed Mark’s neck. He grabbed it and sprayed her throat.

  Jillian watched her new perfume evaporate in the air. When had Lindy bought it? she wondered, watching them play.

  Lindy’s phone rang. “What, Mom,” she said, her voice suddenly bored and irritated.

  Mark gave the perfume back to Jillian. “Sorry.” Their fingers touched in the transaction.

  “I don’t mind.” She didn’t. Not the wasting of the perfume. Certainly not the touching of the fingers.

  When had Lindy bought it? Not when she bought the sweater. Jillian had been with her. She rolled the bottle back and forth between her palms. It had a pleasing weight to it.

  “My mom says to meet her at Starbucks in five,” Lindy said. “You smell good, Mark.”

  He sniffed his arm. “I kind of do.”

  Lindy grabbed his phone and swiped through his recent calls. “Mom work, Mom cell, school . . . blah, blah. How about your dad? Don’t you have a dad?”

  “Lindy!” Jillian cried.

  “My mom’s a black widow spider. She ate my dad after he impregnated her,” Mark said.

  Lindy laughed and started tapping on his phone.

  “Don’t.” He reached for it, but she held it away.

  Her phone chirped. “Oh, a text telling me you think I’m hot? How sweet, Mark.”

  “When did you even buy this?” Jillian said, holding the perfume aloft.

  Lindy rolled her eyes. “We better go. Bye, Marko. In Italy, they’d call you Marko.”

  “O solo mio,” he said, returning to his game.

  “Well,” Jillian said when she and Lindy were on the escalator. “When did you?”

  �
�What?” Lindy sounded annoyed.

  “Buy the perfume.”

  “When you were trying on stuff, duh.”

  “You were with me.”

  “Not every minute, God,” Lindy said.

  Jillian thought about it. “Yes you were.”

  “Oh my God! I was just trying to be nice! If you don’t want it, throw it out!”

  Jillian stepped off the escalator in silence, looking out for the mall guards who were going to arrest them both for shoplifting. Jillian had used the perfume, and it was in her bag. Wasn’t that nearly as bad as stealing it herself? She was sweating under her coat.

  Jillian Miller is not sixteen.

  Jillian Miller is a shoplifter.

  Jillian Miller is not as good friends with Mark Strauss as she pretends to be.

  Kaye, in line at Starbucks, waved to them. “Coffee before we go, girls?”

  “Yeah!” Lindy said.

  Coffee, too, was off limits until she was older.

  “Jillian?” Kaye called. “Frappuccino? Peppermint Mocha?”

  Jillian stood frozen at the precipice; then Lindy came along and gave her a push.

  NICK REGRETTED NOT GRABBING A WARMER COAT THE MINUTE REX pulled him out the door into the yard. He might have turned around and gone back, but Rex was raring to go, tail up, full speed ahead—and really, was there anything more beautiful than a dog who was finally, finally being given his walk? He couldn’t deny him his moment, not for another moment. The afternoon dog walk had become a regular gig for Nick these past weeks, ever since the financially imposed hiatus on work on the White Elephant. When had he started calling it that? It seemed like a bad sign.

  He walked down Tunlaw, past the old houses he still imagined into gold, and over to the green. He’d walk Rex around, maybe let him run leash-less—a forbidden and punishable offense—then go over to the elementary school to pick up Jakey. Jakey would be glad to see him—or maybe he wouldn’t. He usually just said, “Where’s Mommy?” and pulled out his phone so he could play games as they walked home. So much for bonding time; he was basically just there to make sure his son didn’t walk into cars.