Claire (7 page)
“How thoughtful.” Sari lifted her head out of the box. Her shoulders were draped with dresses.
“I knew she had to be cool if you were friends with her.” Amandy tried to tilt-position a yellow knit beret over her damp brown hair, but it kept sliding off.
“Claire-Bear, you should totally take pictures of us in the clothes so we can e-mail them to her.”
“Best idea ever! Even better than the time we decided to BeDazzle all our shoes and purses and belts and pants and pretty much everything.” Sari pushed over the box like a raccoon digging through a trash can so she could get at the stuff on the bottom. She and Amandy jumped off the bed to greet it when it landed. “We can do our makeup and hair for the pictures, and—”
“We can shoot it at Publix so it looks like a real pageant!” Amandy said, crawling inside the box. “She’ll love it!”
Claire’s heart started to pound as she imagined Massie receiving a series of jpegs that featured SAS parading across a fish-scented loading dock in the clothes she’d sent just for Claire.
“Gotta pee.” She casually grabbed her cell phone off the bed and raced out of the room.
Once inside the navy, nautical-themed bathroom, Claire speed-dialed Massie, knowing her questions were far too elaborate for a text. But the call went straight to voice mail. She tried again. And again. And—
Suddenly, “Pocketful of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield blasted from her room. The call would have to wait.
Claire burst through the door. Then she gasped.
Amandy, Sarah, and Sari had piled on layer upon layer of clothes over their bodies. And now they were peeling them off and swing-tossing them around her room. Three-hundred-dollar cashmere tank tops were getting snagged on the corners of picture frames, delicate knit dresses were being broiled on lampshades, and a beautiful slip dress glided into Claire’s metal mesh trash can. Claire’s first instinct was to shut it all down and send everyone home. But the silly striptease
was
actually kind of funny. And whipping a tank top that cost more than an airline ticket across her room was something she’d never again have the chance to do. So Claire grabbed a stack of jeans out of the box and began giggle-pulling them on under her dress.
After the third pair—William Rast, dark wash—Claire began walking like the Tin Man. “Hey, guys, watch this!” But as she reached for a metallic gold scarf that was hanging off her desk chair, she lost her balance and crashed into Amandy.
“Ahhhhh!” The two toppled to the ground in fits of hysterics.
“Look out below!” Sarah and Sari began piling heaps of clothes on top of them like kindling on a bonfire.
“Man down! I’m trapped!” Claire’s stomach ached as she lay beneath Amandy, laughing hysterically, her face smashed between the white shag rug and a Pucci tank. After several minutes of trying to wiggle free, Claire finally managed to extract herself from the Chanel-scented couture cave.
Right when she popped her head out, Sarah and Sari stopped giggling and “Pocketful of Sunshine” ended abruptly in the middle of the third chorus. Just like the frogs in the creek behind Claire’s house stopped croaking when a larger animal was approaching, SAS became eerily silent.
“What’s going on?” Claire turned her head and found herself face-to-leg with a pair of tanned, stubble-free, oil-slicked shins that were practically pressed up against her blond lashes. Suddenly, Claire’s mouth tasted like pennies.
It was the Wicked Witch of Westchester. And her little dog too.
But judging by the burning rage behind Massie’s amber eyes, this house call was about more than a stolen pair of ruby slippers.
Saturday, August 8 4:18 P.M.
Aside from the flared nostrils and hate-filled squint, Massie looked incredible. Dressed in silver lamé shorts, a skinny red crocodile belt, and a blousy ivory silk tank, she looked like a magazine cutout come to life. She was glossier than the rest of the girls in the room. Her coloring was richer, her textures more pronounced.
The whole thing seemed unnatural. Massie holding Bean against a backdrop of faded Hello Kitty stickers and girly home furnishings? It was like she was standing against one of those special-effects green screens, her edges more defined than the corny background’s.
“Ohmygawsh, there she is!” Sarah speed-waved, then raced across the white shag toward Massie. “What an incredible surprise!”
Bean barked twice and Massie lowered her to the ground. She hurried under the bed to avoid getting trampled.
Claire forced herself to stand but couldn’t move beyond that.
“You look exactly like you do in your pictures, except you’re taller, obviously, and three-dimensional and totally nice and generous,” Sari shouted, approaching from the left. “It’s so nice to meet you. Gosh.” Sari turned to Amandy. “Doesn’t she look just like her pictures?”
“Better! I love your blond highlights. And that edgy purple streak behind your ear.” Amandy hug-lifted the alpha.
Massie’s arms clung stiffly to her sides. Her expression was cold and rigid.
“I
knew
it was a Westchester thang!” Sari declared as they wobble-placed her back down on the rug. “No one hugs up there, do they?”
Without a word, Massie quickly pulled a tube of Mango-MaGawd Glossip Girl out of her shorts and applied with life-and-death urgency. Her amber eyes darted back and forth, in synch with the lip wand, silently surveying the damage.
Why won’t you speak?
What are you thinking? Are you mad? How mad? If mad was a ten and not mad was a one, what would you be? Wait!
Why are you even HERE????
Claire wanted to ask these questions and a billion more. But her tonsils held back the words like thick, protective arms, urging her to stand back and assess the danger before jumping in.
“You’re shocked, right?” Sarah playfully knocked Massie on the arm. Her tanned skin flashed white for a second where Sarah had hit her. “You didn’t think we’d like the EW clothes you sent us, did you?” She unzipped a lavender cashmere hoodie, revealing the black sheer blouse she’d stuffed underneath. “But we dooooo!” Tossing the hoodie on the floor like a used tissue, Sarah spun, lost her balance, then crashed onto the bed, creasing the front of the delicate black blouse.
SAS cracked up. Claire bit her thumbnail.
“It was super supportive of you to send clothes for Miss Kiss.” Sari smiled, her top lip curling inward toward her gums.
SAS nodded in agreement. Claire gripped her stomach.
“I can’t believe we ever thought you were
mean
.” Amandy shimmied out of a True Religion miniskirt, revealing a pair of Massie’s red and orange Cosabella boy shorts.
“I dunno if Claire told you this.” Sari put her arm on Amandy’s shoulder. “But
her
name used to be
Mandy
before she changed it to Ah-mandy. And Mandy sounds like Massie, which is kind of funny because you both have the same best friend and the same taste in clothes. I bet she could totally change it back if you wanted. So you could be more the same. Right?”
Amandy eagerly nodded yes.
SAS beam-grinned at Massie.
Slowly, Massie parted her high-glossed lips. Then she inhaled with a long, deep rattle that sounded like she was having an asthma attack. Unwittingly, Claire lifted her shoulders toward her ears. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself against the force that was building inside of Massie. Preparing herself to face the eye of the storm. Hoping to—
“KUUUUHHHH-LAAAAAIRE!” Massie bellowed.
The pictures on the headboard fluttered. A Hello Kitty pencil rolled off the desk. SAS piled onto the bed and covered themselves with Claire’s collection of DIY T-shirt pillows. Bean whimpered.
“So, um.” Claire fanned her burning face and tried to smile. “What brings you to Orlando?” She giggled nervously.
“There’s a cold front in the Hamptons.” Massie sneered.
Suddenly, Claire remembered hearing something about the Blocks taking a three-week luxury cruise in the Mediterranean and wondered if Massie had nowhere else to go. A teeny-tiny sympathy tingle, the size of a baby sea monkey, fluttered in her belly. She couldn’t imagine her parents going away for three weeks and leaving her behind. But still. It was hard to feel 100 percent sorry for someone who made you feel unwelcome in your own bedroom.
“So if your FLBR friends wouldn’t mind returning my stolen luggage and—”
“This is your
luggage
?” Amandy put her hand on her heart. “As in, the stuff you packed for
vacation
?”
Massie glared at her in an of-course-what-did-you-think-it-was? sort of way.
“Wow.” Sarah pulled a candy necklace out of her back pocket and stretched it over her massive head of hair. “How long are you staying?”
Too long!
Claire thought.
“What’s an FLBR?” Sari asked, her voice slightly elevated by a hopeful lilt. “No, wait, lemme guess. Friends Love Bunny Rabbits.” She turned to Massie. “Am I close?”
Massie stomped over to the bed, placed her hands on her hips, and glared down at the trembling SAS cluster. “It means you’re a—”
“It means you’re from Florida,” Claire interrupted. “You know. Like you’re my Florida friends.” She sat on the edge of the bed, between Massie and SAS.
“What’s the LBR part?” Sarah pulled her candy necklace toward her mouth and bit down.
Massie rolled her eyes. “Um, Claire, are you a locksmith?”
She shook her head no, desperately wishing she could mute the next five seconds of her life. Because someone was about to get insulted—probably her—and the last thing Claire wanted was for her Florida friends to see what Westchester was really like. Not that it was bad—just occasionally humiliating. And why make them worry?
“I asked, are you a locksmith?”
“No.” Claire laughed, like this was a fun inside joke they shared.
“Then why are you hanging with these dorkys?”
Claire lowered her eyes in shame.
Did Massie really think her friends were so bad? And if so why wasn’t Claire rushing to their defense?
“Door
keys
?” Sarah scratched her head. “Why are we door keys?” She giggled.
“Maybe she means the
Florida
Keys,” Sari tried. Then she turned to Massie with a compassionate smile. “Do you mean the Florida Keys? Because technically Orlando is part of the mainland. But the Keys are cool. Key West is super fun around the holidays.”
Massie ignored her while she rearranged the headboard photos so that the shots of her were in the center.
Claire, feeling more in the middle than Malcolm, had the sensation that a giant gummy worm was wrapping itself around her heart. Either that or she was about to blow an artery. Like a superhero with the ability to read minds, she knew exactly what everyone was thinking. And the more tuned-in she became, the harder the gummy worm squeezed.
Undoubtedly, Massie was wondering why Claire was friends with these simple, unsophisticated girls. Girls who looked their age and saved their allowances for weeks just to buy one new thing at A&F. She probably assumed Claire was holding on to them for the summer because she had no one else. But now that
she
had arrived, it was okay to treat SAS like last season’s flats.
And then there was SAS. They were probably thinking that Massie’s icy attitude was just a New York thing, and that she would warm to them when she realized they had been officially accepted in the Miss Kiss pageant.
“We may be door keys.” Amandy lifted herself up onto her knees on the edge of the bed and giggle-mumbled. “Whatever that means. But we are
grateful
door keys. Lending us your luggage for our pageant is—”
Claire braced herself for another storm.
“Pageant?”
Massie practically spat. “Don’t even
say
that word in front of my clothes. The sound alone is enough to make the fabric pill.”
SAS’s smiles faded to frowns. They finally got it.
“But”—Sari pout-glanced at Claire—“I thought you said these were gifts?”
“The only
gift
you’re getting is a bill from my dry cleaner,” Massie barked. “Now remove my clothes from your fruit-scented bodies before I—”
“Surprise!” Judi elbow-pushed the bedroom door open. Her arms were shaking under the weight of an enormous peanut-butter ice cream cake in the shape of giant lips. “Everyone downstairs. We have a lot to celebrate!”
Suddenly Claire thought of the orchestra on the
-Titanic
and how they started playing while the ship was sinking. Because celebrating, under the current circumstances, seemed just as pointless.
THE LYONSES’ KITCHEN
KISSIMMEE, FL
Saturday, August 8 5:03 P.M.
“Cake, cake, cake!” Todd chant-shouted as he bolted down the peach-carpeted stairs to the kitchen.
Jay Lyons was already seated at the head of the diner-style booth, anxiously slapping a pink plastic fork against the Minnie Mouse paper plate that was left over from Claire’s eighth birthday party. Judi leaned over him, poking the frozen desert with letter candles that spelled W-E-L-C-O-M-E on the top lip for Massie and M-I-S-S K-I-S-S on the bottom for everyone else.
SAS slid in on one side of the booth, while Massie and Claire tucked into the other. Everyone pretended to be fascinated with Todd and his ability to run tight circles around the cooking island while screaming the word
cake
so they wouldn’t have to look at one another.
Until today, the kitchen had been Claire’s favorite room in the house. The booth, with its red sparkly vinyl padding and matching Formica tabletop, was not something most families were lucky enough to have. But Jay had won it at a church charity casino night and had decided to commit the entire kitchen to the 1950s soda shop theme.
The floor was covered in black-and-white tiles, and the appliances were the same ones that had belonged to Claire’s grandparents. The blender was turquoise, and the Mixmaster was cupcake yellow. Pictures of old Cadillacs hung on the walls next to drawings of doting housewives pulling roasts from the oven. Two pairs of gray Reebok Rollerblades—ones her parents had been wearing when they first met—were preserved in a plastic shadow box beside the pantry. The room had more charm than
Juno
.
