“I didn’t - I’m sorry –”
“I don’t wanna talk about it anymore,” she murmurs. “I have to watch Gerald, so if you could just leave, that’d be great.”
I feel all the air punch out of me at once.
“Oh. R-Right. Sure.”
I grab my backpack and books, shuffling them away. Kayla gets up and goes into the kitchen, wiping dirt off her brother’s face and scolding him for trying to eat daisies. I want to say bye, or apologize again, but there’s a thick curtain of awkward closing on the stage that is our tenuous friendship. I want to say a lot of things to her. I want to thank her for being the first person to really invite me over to their house, to talk to me, to eat lunch with me. But those words get stuck in my throat, the gratitude I have for her dammed up by shame.
As I leave and start my car, I mentally kick myself. Of course she gets told she’s pretty. She gets it all the time. Pretty girls like her are sick of hearing it. I was insensitive to even say it – but how could someone like me understand what pretty girls experience?
Ugly girl.
Jack kissing me – was it really such a huge deal for her? Maybe I underestimated her feelings for him. She must really like him if she’s that upset. Hell, if I still believed in love and had someone I liked and they kissed my sort-of-friend, I’d be mad at that friend too.
She has every right to hate me.
Mom texts me, asking me to buy sponges and some blueberries on the way home. I’m feeling terrible about what I said – so terrible I grab a bar of chocolate. Or three. When I get home I sneak into Mom’s bathroom and count her pills – she’s down two. That’s good. That means she took them. I can breathe easier, and maybe get a solid night’s sleep.
“There’s a package for you from your father,” Mom says. She’s up and baking muffins – hence the blueberries. It’s a good sign. No, scratch that; it’s the best sign I’ve seen in a while.
“Thanks.” I smile. Forced smile. Always a little forced. It won’t be a real smile until she’s really better.
But I don’t remember what better looks like, anymore.
The package is wrapped in brown paper and on my bed. The box inside reads Chanel. Dad married a rich programmer from New York – they’ve got two-year-old twin girls, and a boy on the way. I’ve never met them, but just knowing I have stepsiblings wigs me out. I see them on Facebook through the pictures Dad posts, but it’s like they aren’t real. It’s like they’re photoshopped Loch Ness monsters and the University of Whatever is going to prove the hoax by showing me the beam of light in the background is wavy or something.
They’re real.
Sometimes I wish they weren’t.
And that’s horrible, so I stop wishing that. Or at least I try to.
Inside the box is a beautiful chiffon blouse. It’s light and fluffy and with dozens of frills, expertly tailored to my measurements. Dad’s new wife wheedled them out of me two summers ago when I visited. She’s nice enough, but it’s things like this that remind me she just wants me to like her. She thinks gifts of expensive name brands are all it takes to woo a high school girl.
She’s half right. A blouse like this would woo any girl. Any girl who isn’t ugly. But before I can fold it carefully and put it in my closet to never touch again, I stop and consider this one. If I wore this, would I be prettier? Will it make me prettier? Maybe if I put this on, I can be pretty, and understand a smidgen of what Kayla’s problems are, what she feels. Maybe I can understand her better.
I pull my shirt off and slip the blouse over my head. It’s so cool and airy, and the ruffles bounce with my every step. I can see my angry red stretch marks on my stomach through the gauzy fabric, but they don’t bug me as much for some reason. I smile at myself in the mirror – I look different. Prettier.
Maybe Nameless was wrong. Maybe I am pretty.
The door to my room opens just then, and I’m frozen in the headlights that are Mom’s eyes. She looks me up and down, and immediately shakes her head.
“Oh, honey, that doesn’t suit you at all.”
The air punches out of me again, but this time in a deeper way. A more final way. Mom opens the door wider, totally oblivious to how deep the wound is.
“The muffins are ready. Come down and have some.”
“Awesome. One sec. Just, uh, let me change out of this stupid thing.”
When she’s gone I can’t look at myself in the mirror without flinching. The ruffles seem to droop idiotically. The color is an eyesore, especially on me. It’s not my thing. Being pretty is not my thing and I was stupid for testing the logical facts and practical boundaries. There are rules. And the number one rule is don’t try to be someone you’re not. I’m myself, no matter how ugly that is, and trying to be someone prettier is stupid, a waste of energy. I won’t do that ever again, no matter how much I want to. It’s not worth it. I will never be anything but ugly. And I’ve come to terms with that. I’ve made my peace with that.
I stuff the blouse in the box and chuck it in the closet.
-4-
3 Years
12 Weeks
4 Days
For approximately two weeks I debate the validity of ruining Jack Hunter’s life slash reputation slash all future prospects with women. Or men. Just love in general, really. Guys like him shouldn’t get to be happy. He ruins a girl’s happiness at least once per hour. On Wednesday, someone left him a love letter tucked between the wipers of his black sedan. He tore it off without a second glance and ripped it in two. A distant wail could be heard as a well-dressed, beautiful blonde girl from drama club had her heart shattered and smeared all over the pavement. She’d been watching for his reaction, and now she had to watch the pieces of her carefully-crafted letterfeelings whisk across the parking lot. I chased the pieces around, grabbing as many as I could, and comforted her for three hours in a stairwell while she cried on me. I pieced the letter back together. It was full of Shakespearian references and a particularly well thought out passage in which she drew comparisons between Jack and Romeo. I informed her she was right – Romeo’s manic mental illness and pigheaded refusal to acknowledge another person’s feelings are mirrored exactly in Jack. She thanked me for that keen assessment by calling me a bitch and storming off.
Dramaclub Wailer was just the first. In two weeks of stealthily following Jack around campus, I count four love confessions, each more creative than the last. The girl who runs the morning announcements says Jack’s won a prize from the announcement committee, and to come to the PA room after school to get it. She does this every. Single. Day. And yet every day Jack never goes near the PA room – he doesn’t even walk in the same hall as it. He takes a route that leads him around it and makes him almost late for fourth period. I sneak a peek at the PA room after school for a few days; sure enough, announcement girl waits in that room for thirty minutes every day before finally locking up and going home with a defeated look on her face. A girl in art club is working on a marble statue of him (it’s definitely him, everyone knows that) complete with resplendent Greek posture and a perfectly replicated face. She’s left the crotch area blank and goes red if anyone asks her about it, but she’s diligently chipped away at it since Freshmen year, and she’s now a Senior. Another girl writes poetry and leaves it in his locker, and another girl in culinary class is drawing up plans to make him a three-tier cake for his birthday in January.
Through all this, Jack is impervious. He reportedly dropped out of art class so he wouldn’t have to see the statue in the studio. With an expression of utter boredom, he cleans out the dozens of new poem scraps that appear in his locker every day. It’s like he’s numb to whatever a girl does to get his attention. No one dares to call his name out loud in the hall. He doesn’t have any guy friends – he keeps to himself at lunch and during recess he’s in the library.