Calling Maggie May (3 page)

Wed, Nov 5

Screw this journal and screw Mom. I am so done with recording my pathetic attempts to distinguish myself for colleges, and I am really done with her nagging and demanding. I got second place overall at the swim meet today, but when I told Mom, she barely even looked up except to ask how the debate tournament went. Well, Mom, let me tell you: It was awful. I somehow got my notes out of order, and my opponent was really good, and the upshot was I didn't even place. Not that this is any surprise—I've never been good at debate. I hate public speaking. I never would have joined that stupid club except that Mark was awesome at it, of course, so
Mom naturally assumed that I should do the exact same thing.

How hard would it be for her to just say congratulations? Or nice job? Or maybe make a comment about how all my hard work in the pool paid off? But no. She has to fixate on the debate thing, which spiraled into a monster list of all my other shortcomings, until she cornered me into a two-hour lecture about what a worthless, terrible, disobedient child I am. Disobedient! That was the real slap in the face. All I ever do is obey. For as long as I can remember, I have done everything she asked, everything she told me to do, everything she wanted, up until and including this dumb journal. And what has it gotten me? Not a whole lot.

And the worst thing is, I don't even know why. Do I care about her approval? Do I even want it? Or is it just a failure of imagination? Maybe I let her direct every tiny aspect of my life because it's easier than thinking for myself, than actually deciding what it is I want and what's important to me.

Everything in my life has always been for her, from which classes I take to which activities I do to the food I eat and the clothes I wear. And I have never questioned any of it, but what's my reward? To be told that I've failed at being a dutiful daughter. The only thing I've ever really tried at.

Sometimes I wonder what she would do if she had a really bad daughter. It would blow her mind. I should do that, just to
make her appreciate how good I've been all this time. Just let everything go, let myself be bad.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'd never have the guts to do that.

Thurs, Nov 6

I did it! I can't believe it, but I actually did something, well, bad today. I guess I am officially a bad girl now. And weirdly, the world didn't end. In fact, I seem to have gotten away with it.

I feel like an idiot for spending so much of my life being well behaved and obedient, terrified that if I ever did anything wrong, anything for myself, anything fun, everything would come crashing down around me. I'm not even sure what I thought would happen, but I had to believe there was some terrible punishment awaiting me, or else why would I keep doing all that stuff I didn't want to do?

And now I feel like that was all a big lie. The world doesn't work like that at all, and I don't have to live in constant fear of messing up. I can live a little, breathe a little. Make my own decisions. And it will be okay.

Even if I do wind up getting found out and getting in trouble, I don't know that I care. I wouldn't change anything about today, because it was amazing. Even if I get grounded for a million billion years and never see sunlight again, I won't regret today.

It didn't start that great, honestly. In my fit of rebellion last
night, I decided not to study for my chemistry test, and taking the test without any preparation felt pretty bad. I even felt a little sick to my stomach, just thinking about having to turn it in with basically nothing on it. I never do that. Usually I'm freaking out if I think I might get anything less than a ninety, so the very thought of what a zero might do to my average made me break out in a cold sweat.

I started panicking right there in the middle of the test, and I guess I must have looked pretty bad, because the teacher asked me if I was feeling all right. I took that as my cue. I just said “no” and got up and ran out of the classroom. Part of me was sure he would come after me, but the decision was made for me pretty quickly by my stomach. So I just ran for the nearest bathroom and barfed into one of the toilets.

I felt a lot better after that, but I didn't know what to do with myself next. I really didn't want to go back to class and finish the test. But I didn't want to go to the nurse either. So instead I just hid out in the bathroom until I could go to my next class.

That's when Ada walked in.

She was wearing a wrap dress that clung to every line and curve of her figure. She gave me a quick look and said, “Hey,” before starting to reapply her lipstick in the mirror. “Shouldn't you be in class?” she asked.

“Shouldn't you?” I countered.

She shrugged and returned her attention to the mirror. “I won't tell if you don't.”

That seemed like the end of the conversation, but I didn't want it to be. I cast around for something else to say to her, but before I could think of anything, she started up again. She capped the top of her lipstick with a delicate pop, then turned to me and said, “Why is it you never wear makeup at school?”

“Me?” I said, as if there were anyone else she could have been talking to.

“You,” she said. “I always thought . . . you and your friends. None of them wear makeup. I always figured it was because you were above it. You seemed to have more important things to worry about than looking pretty for boys.”

That in itself was a revelation. Ada Culver, of all the people on this earth, had not only looked at me and noticed me before we ever spoke, but it sounded like she might have been a little jealous of me. It's weird to even write those words down. I can't really believe that it's true, but I don't know. In the moment, I was so shocked I couldn't even say anything.

“But now,” she continued, “now I know you're just as boy crazy as anyone in this place. You want boys like Tyler Adams to like you. So why don't you try?”

“What do you mean, try?”

“You're a smart girl. You can figure it out. Take some of that brainpower you put into your classes and apply it to your looks. You could have ten Tylers if you wanted.”

I shook my head. “It would take more than a coat of lipstick to make a boy like that notice me.”

Ada looked me up and down, appraising. “You'd be surprised what lipstick can do. Come here.”

I opened my mouth to ask why, or maybe to put her off, but then I realized I didn't want to, and I didn't care why. I pushed myself away from the wall and stepped toward her. She smelled like jasmine and tobacco.

“Tilt your head up,” she said, “and relax your mouth.”

One of her hands came up and rested just below my ear, steadying my head. With the other, she carefully smudged the waxy pigment around my lips. “There,” she said. “What do you think?”

She stepped away from me, and for a minute I just stood there rubbing my lips together, acclimating to the strange feel of it. Then I turned toward the mirror. If I had been expecting a miraculous, Hollywood-style transformation, I didn't get it. I guess I had been, because I couldn't quite stop a bubble of disappointment from welling up inside me. It was still my face, still my boring, blunt haircut, still my broad swimmer's shoulders and practical clothes. But
now ornamented with a slash of bright red. It was definitely striking.

“Hmm,” said Ada. “Not really your color. But I have more at home. You should come over. I haven't played makeover in years.”

Ada Culver was inviting me to her house? I couldn't quite believe my ears.

“When?” I said.

She gave me a funny look. “What's wrong with now?”

“But it's the middle of the school day.”

Ada started to laugh but swallowed it back down. “Yeah,” she said. “That's right.” Not like she had forgotten, but like she had forgotten that might mean something to other people. She dropped her lipstick tube into her purse and turned toward the door.

“Wait,” I said, and she stopped. I thought about my fight with my mom, how just once I wanted to show her what real disobedience was. And how I'd never had the guts to really do it.

“I . . . ,” I said, hesitating for a moment on the edge of this new me. “Okay. Let's go.”

* * *

We took the bus. I kept expecting someone to stop us and ask us what we were doing out of school in the middle of the day, but no one did. Maybe it was the lipstick. I don't know if it
made me look more grown-up, but it made me feel more in control. Like I was wearing a mask, almost.

Ada's house wasn't at all what I'd expected. Based on her clothes and her phone and how she carried herself, I just assumed her house would be some big mansion with a pool and a housekeeper and a badminton court in the yard. But we got off in front of a small, shabby ranch house covered in pale yellow aluminum siding, with a big hole sliced through the screen door. Ada unlocked the door and let me in. The rooms inside were cramped and dark, with junk mail and celebrity gossip magazines strewn over every surface. I've never thought of myself as one of the rich kids, but it made my house seem like a palace. I mean, at least we've got two floors and a piano and the beautiful garden Mom works so hard on. Ada's house looked like no one really cared about it at all.

Ada showed me down a hallway to her bedroom. Clothes were heaped on every surface, as well as scarves and shoes and a pile of coats in the corner.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don't usually have people over.”

I hovered between the desk and the bed, still not sure what I was doing there. Ada stayed on the other side of the room, leaning against the doorjamb with her hands behind her back. She looked nervous. “It's kind of a dump, I know.”

“No,” I said, thinking of my room back at home. It was clean
and neat, with every little piece of my life squared away into its proper place, wallpaper and bedding chosen without consulting me. It felt like a prison. “I like it. Is it okay if I . . . ?” I indicated the bed.

“Go ahead.” She nodded. “You can just dump all that stuff on the floor.”

I couldn't bring myself to do that, so I just pushed some of the clothes toward the other side of the bed and perched myself on the edge. She tugged out her desk chair. On the seat was a rat's-nest tangle of jewelry.

“Right, the lipstick,” said Ada mysteriously. “Let's see what we have.”

She pulled a shoe box out from under the desk and opened it. It was cluttered with all kinds of makeup, from samples to cheap drug-store tubes to stuff that looked really fancy.

“Hmm, purple could be dramatic,” she said, “but maybe too gothy. Coral . . . No, all wrong for your skin tone. Maybe something with some brown?”

“Brown?” I said dubiously.

“It sounds like it would be ugly, but it's very sophisticated. I promise. Here.” She held up the tube she had been seeking, uncapped it, and twisted it to reveal a deep, earthy russet. “This will be great on you.”

She grabbed a tissue from a box on the dresser and carefully
wiped the other color away, then replaced it with the darker hue. She sat back to examine her handiwork. “Beautiful.”

“That might be an exaggeration,” I mumbled.

She leaned closer to me, and I could smell her perfume again.

“Oh, I don't know,” she said, brushing the bangs off my face. “You don't know it, but you could break a lot a hearts with those cheekbones.”

“Very funny.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I don't get the joke.”

“Sure you do,” I said, feeling frustrated. “It's me. I'm the joke, and you're the one laughing. I can't have a guy like Tyler any more than I can have a diamond bracelet or a . . . a unicorn.”

Ada laughed. It was the first time I'd heard her laugh, and it was a jagged sound, like a machine that hadn't been used in a while.

“I don't know about the unicorn, but you could have Tyler if you wanted him, and the diamond bracelet too. But you're too smart for that, right?” I didn't answer. “Right? You saw what he was like. And now that you've seen, you know better than to think that's a prize worth fighting for.”

I think I managed to nod. In any case, she gave me a brief smile.

“Here,” she said, pressing the tube of lipstick into my
palm. “You should take this. It looks awful on me. Now you just need some clothes to go with that pretty face.”

Her long legs took her from the bed to the closet in two strides. She started going through the piles of clothes all over her room and tossing things at me. It seemed crazy at first. . . . She's tall and skinny and I'm short and dumpy, but she said not to worry.

“It'll look different on you, but good.” And she was right. I put on a dress I've seen her wear—a clinging navy knit with small brass buttons—and a part of me had a fantasy that it would magically turn me into her. It didn't, but when I stood in front of the mirror, it didn't look bad. I looked curvy, not dumpy.

“There you are . . . all dolled up for a night out on the town.”

I laughed. “Not like I have anywhere to go.”

That's when it hit me. It was two thirty, almost the end of the school day, and Mom would be expecting me home soon. Plus, I needed to figure out an unfamiliar bus route. “I need to get going,” I said, heading for the door to her room. Then I remembered I was still wearing her dress. I went to take it off, but she stopped me. “Keep it,” she said. “It looks better on you.”

That was definitely the lie of the century, but I appreciated it. Even if it didn't look better on me than on her, it definitely looked better than any of the clothes I currently owned. I stuffed my school clothes into my swim bag and hurried off.

On the bus home, I couldn't help smiling to myself. I felt like I had finally figured out what friends were. Technically, Jenny and Eiko and the other geeks were my friends, but I didn't much enjoy the time I spent with them, and if we got together, it was only to study or work on a project. With Ada, it wasn't like that at all.

All afternoon I had been on an adrenaline high from skipping school and hanging out with the bad girl, but on that bus, my normal self caught up with me and I started panicking about what would happen when I got home. Would my mom know? Well, obviously, if I walked in with makeup on and someone else's clothes, that wasn't going to help my case.

I dug a tissue out of my bag and carefully swiped off all traces of the lipstick. Then I got off the bus a few blocks from home and changed into my usual clothes in a restaurant bathroom. By the time I got to my house, I was back to my normal self, and only a few minutes later than usual. Still, as I opened the door, my heart was in my throat, not knowing what might await me. I heard Mom call me as the door swung shut behind me. I found her in the den, playing mah-jongg on the computer.

“Someone called this afternoon,” she said in Chinese. The school. They called to let her know I ditched class. My heart pounded in my chest so hard I was sure she could hear it.
“Check the voice mail,” she said without looking up from her game.

That's when it hit me. Mom never answered the phone unless it was a familiar number—someone from our family or the Chinese community. She didn't trust her English on the phone with strangers, so she let the voice mail get it and had me or my dad listen to it when we got home. This was perfect! I nodded meekly, obediently, and went off to listen to the message. It was the school, reporting me absent for my third- through sixth-period classes. I pressed delete.