Chapter Two
For the fiftieth time, at least, Debbie Marshall wished she were back home in Ohio, or anyplace except here. It didn’t take a genius-level I.Q. to know that she was unwanted, and Lisa and Holly made her feel nearly as welcome as a bastard child at the family reunion.
She blushed at the thought. Normally her mind didn’t run in such vulgar channels. Chalk it up to the influences around her. Lisa’s favorite adjective appeared to be “mother fuckin”. Debbie had never heard the word so many times as she had since climbing into the camper van. Mother fuckin’ this, mother fuckin’ that, mother fuckin’ everything. Holly was nearly as bad. They were vulgar girls with unladylike habits, and she didn’t at all relish the idea of spending almost a week in a tent with them. But what choice did she have?
She hadn’t wanted to come. She could have gone to summer school and taken a couple of next year’s classes early; that way she’d be able to graduate in January and get a head start on college. But Mom and Dad had insisted. They were making the western pilgrimage, visiting relatives all along the way, and she had to come along. And here she was now, carted off with her cousin Holly and Holly’s friend for a camping trip. Debbie had never gone camping before; she didn’t want to go camping now, and especially not with Lisa and Holly. But everyone insisted.
“You’re not as fat as you used to be,” Holly had said on their first meeting.
“And you’re gotten rid of the braces, too. Hot shit.” Holly. They’d never been friends and they never would be. It was so easy to despite her cousin. She was pretty, for one thing, slender and willowy, with a cute face and delicate curves in all the right places, and she walked with a careless ease that made her curves and wiggles all come together in an eye-catching pattern. Holly was made for California and year-round sunshine and beaches and bikinis.
Skimpy bikinis that would show off acres of what had to be perfect skin. Lisa, too. Debbie wasn’t sure which of the girls she hated most, and trying to decide gave her Something to do as Lisa roared the van up narrow, twisting mountain roads that made Debbie’s stomach twitch involuntarily.
“Hand me another beer,” Lisa announced, and Holly reached ‘inside the stay-cold pack on the floor. She popped the top and passed the can to Lisa, who removed one hand from the wheel to take it. Debbie looked away. Didn’t they know it was dangerous and illegal to drink beer while driving?
Holly was busy rolling another cigarette. It didn’t look like tobacco she was putting inside it, and when she lit the thing, it didn’t smell like tobacco, either. The pungent aroma Of the last cigarette was still strong inside the cab and Debbie felt a little light-beaded. Holly and Lisa kept giggling while they smoked, and she wondered if their cigarette contained marijuana? Well, she wasn’t about to ask. If they were dope addicts, it was their own business. She only wished she were back home.
“So my mother says, ‘Be very careful, dear. Didn’t you read in the paper about that convict who escaped from the state prison? It gives me the willies to think of you and Holly and Holly’s little cousin off by yourselves with an escaped felon running loose.’ “Lisa giggled, took a hearty swallow of her beer, and adroitly maneuvered the van through a curve so sharp and abrupt that Debbie had to close her eyes lest she become sick. “I told her, ‘Jesus, Mom, the state pen is sixty miles from here. If the dude has any smarts, he’d long since hauled ass across the state line.”
“My mom’s the same way,” Holly sighed, inhaling’ deeply on the hand-rolled cigarette. “Somebody busts out of the can, she starts checking all the windows at night and putting a chair under the fuckin’ doorknob so nobody can break into her bedroom.”
“Maybe she’s just ‘worried,” Debbie volunteered. “After all, we are going up into the mountains, and there’s nobody to protect us or”
“Can it,” Holly said. Debbie canned it.
She tried to concentrate on the scenery-the sharp drop-offs at the edge of the road, the, forested slopes rising above them as the van climbed the mountains-but the way Lisa was driving, Debbie couldn’t help wondering if the vehicle and its passengers,weren’t likely at any moment to become part of the scenery, crashed into a tree or a rock, or plunged over one of those steep cliffs. And the smell of that burning cigarette was sickly-sweet in her nostrils, making her feel even more woozy than Lisa’s driving had managed to do. She’d never been carsick before but she thought there was a chance of it now. And to make matters worse, she had to pee.
“Let me out right here.” That’s what she wanted to say, but she didn’t.
Instead, Debbie just folded her arms on her tummy and sank back onto the seat.
It was so crowded, with three of them up front; she wished she’d crawled into the back of the van where she wouldn’t have to be so close to Lisa and Holly.
Why do I have to be so ugly? she asked herself. At least it was something to think about, take her mind off the trip.
Her hair, for one thing, was hopeless. Red wires that frizzed a little less when she kept it cut short, so she used the scissors regularly. When she looked in the mirror she thought always of Brillo. And her skin. If she even heard Of the sun’s shining anywhere, she got freckles. Millions of them. They didn’t make enough cosmetics to cover the freckles, so she never wore any. It wouldn’t have helped. She was pathetically plain-faced, and she never realized it so clearly as when she was in the company of really pretty girls like Holly and Lisa.
Her body wasn’t much better. At thirteen she’d been very fat-five-two and a hundred and fifty pounds. At sixteen she was three inches taller and twenty-five pounds lighter, but she felt just as fat, and being around slender lovelies such as Lisa and Holly was no help. Her breasts were too big. She envied the other girls with their small hard titties, their lithe slim legs, their tight wiggly bottoms. They could wear form-fitting clothes and look great. She was wearing one of her dad’s work shirts, two sizes big, and a par of denims that fit her like a tent.
As if anyone would have noticed, in, first place. No one ever had. Debbie had had two dates in her life, both of them arranged by her mother, both of them total disasters. Neither boy had ever called back. Bet Lisa and Holly didn’t have that problem. They probably had to fight boys off with a club.
But on the other hand, who really wanted to be like Holly and Lisa?
Foul-mouthed as sailors, cheap and trashy. Probably without a moral sense in their empty heads. And she was certain that they got lousy grades in school, too. Oh, the heck with them! That smoke was getting thicker and thicker, and the other girls kept talking and jabbering like magpies and every other word seemed to be "fuck” and she wished they’d just knock it off, for God’s sake.
Debbie closed her eyes again and willed herself to take a little nap. Maybe that would help. At least she wouldn’t have to listen to their dirty mouths.
When she awoke, the van was parked in a wide space between some large leafy trees. They were high up the mountain, and the air was the freshest and cleanest Debbie had ever inhaled. The paved road was nowhere in sight, but she could see a dirt path away off in the distance. All around then the woods were green and enfolding and apparently ancient, and she could picture Grizzly Adams leading his bears down the path natural as could
“Lend a hand,” Holly called from the back of the van. “Make yourself good for something.”
Debbie got out and went around to join the other girls, but she’d never pitched a tent before and she had no idea how to assist. “Oh, fuck it,” Lisa growled, “you’re just in the way. Go play in the road or something.”