Cycler (2 page)

After a round of furious page flipping, Ramie looks up from her magazine and evaluates my outfit. “You need to rethink that jacket,” she says.

I smooth my hands over the velvet jacket, which fits me like a glove, then have a look in the mirror above the dresser. “Why? It’s deeply flattering.”

“It’s too fitted.” She lies on her stomach and eyeballs me while flipping through her magazine at warp speed. “So, what’s the deal?” she says.

I sit on the bed and leaf through the June issue. “Well,” I say. “It turns out I have a bit of a senior prom issue.”

She stops flipping. “How can you have a prom issue? It’s only February. Prom isn’t for another . . .” She starts counting out the months on her fingers.

“Four months.” I point to the calendar above my desk. “One hundred and twenty-six days, to be precise.”

Ramie stares at the calendar, on which I’ve written the remaining days until prom night in every single square. “Uh, Jill,” she says. “You need help.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

“Dude, I meant professional help.” She returns to her magazine. “Ooh, ooh,” she says. “Look at this.” She slides it across the bed. It’s opened to a crazy picture of a model layered with acres of clashing Aztec prints.

“She looks fat,” I say.

“It’s volume, Jill.” She pulls the magazine back to her side of the bed. “Skinny is over. It’s all about volume.”

“Uh-huh.” The only good thing I can say about the picture is that it was shot in the desert. Someplace hot. I hate winter. It dominates so much of the calendar here in Massachusetts, they named my town Winterhead. How depressing is that?

Ramie turns the page slowly to a DPS, which stands for double-page spread in the fashion industry. “Now that’s what I call styling,” she says. Then she peels all five feet ten inches of her fat-free body off the bed and stands before my open closet. She pulls out a white corset dress. Laying it on the bed, she pulls off her cruddy beige sweater, which causes her D-cup boobs to bounce beneath her pink alligator shirt. When I called her “fat free,” I forgot to mention the boobs. Ramie’s built like a bombshell. She lays the cruddy sweater on top of the white dress and says, “Counterpoint. It’s all about counterpoint.”

“I thought it was all about volume.”

“They’re not incompatible, smart-ass.” From the back pocket of her baggy jeans, she pulls a wide rainbow-striped ribbon and cinches the sweater at the waist with it. “So, do I have to beat it out of you or are you going to tell me about this prom issue?” She goes to my closet and drops to her knees to excavate the crate of accessories I keep on the floor.

“Okay.” I move all the magazines to my desk to make room for her experiment in contrapuntal styling. “So, last week in chem lab,” I say, “Steven Price asked me to the prom.”

Ramie twists her head over her shoulder to look at me. “Steven Price?”

She looks really pretty when she does that, so I make a mental note of it. It may come in handy later when I need to look alluring. “Yup,” I say. “We were washing beakers and he just blurted it out.”

Ramie stands up with a giant hair clip and uses it to cinch the waist of the sweater lying on the bed. “Hmm,” she says. “You’re not secretly in love with Steven Price and about to tell me this is deeply good news, right?”

I slump on the bed next to the outfit. “He’s a really, really super nice guy but—”

“You don’t have to say it.” Ramie bunches up the sleeves of the cruddy beige sweater. “Geeks are deeply cool now, but somehow Steven manages to be just geeky. What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Gosh, Steven, don’t you think it’s a little early for that?’ ”

“Ouch,” Ramie says.

“I know.” I tie the beige sweater in a knot at the midriff in an attempt to minimize its influence on the outfit as a whole. “The last thing I want to do is hurt Steven’s feelings,” I say. “We’ve been lab partners for two years.”

“Uh-huh.” She adjusts the ribbon’s bow just left of center, then decides against it and rips it off.

“Mom says guys like Steven Price are good to keep track of for later use,” I say. “But for right now—social death.”

Ramie just stares at me.

“I know. But that’s Mom for you. Anyway, the whole sad incident got me thinking about the fact that I have no boyfriend, no prospects and no strategy in place to ensure a successful prom experience.”

“Hmm” is all Ramie comes up with. Then she returns to the closet floor, where an ecosystem of forgotten clothes has taken root. I suppose I should mention that Ramie thinks the prom is stupid. Ramie thinks all high school traditions are stupid.

She stands up holding a bright paisley scarf and lays it across the ugly beige sweater. “There.” She backs away from the outfit and squints at it. Then she rips off her pink alligator shirt and squeezes her D-cup boobs into the B-cup corset dress. “Zip me,” she says.

I get the zipper an inch up her back. “Can you breathe?”

“Nope,” she says. “Keep zipping.”

She sucks in her stomach and I tug the zipper half an inch higher. “That’s it.”

I stand back as she pulls on the beige sweater and ties it at the breastbone.

“You have to be willing to suffer for your art,” she says.

“Uh-huh.”

As fun as it is watching Ramie bust out of my corset dress, I’m distracted by my prom issue. You see, once I started worrying about the prom, a certain someone I had previously not noticed suddenly made himself intriguingly visible to me. It was as if the universe itself were summoning its awesome powers to save me from prom malness.

I take a deep breath. “So, Rames,” I say. “What do you think about Tommy Knutson?”

“Tommy Knutson?” she says. “You mean that weird guy from Brazil?” She grabs a pink down vest from my closet.

“New York,” I tell her. “I think he moved here from New York.”

“Oh. I heard Brazil,” she says. “But then I also heard L.A. He’s kind of mysterious, right? Doesn’t talk much?”

“No,” I say. “But he’s been doing sticky eyes with me.”

“Really?”

“We’re in H Block calculus together,” I tell her. “He sits one row over and two seats in front of me, and last week he started doing it.”

“Uh-huh.” She zips the puffy pink vest over the outfit.

“I’m not talking furtive glances either,” I say. “I’m talking one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three. Once, I counted all the way to five.”

“You count?” She hands me the rainbow ribbon and sticks her arms out to the side. I tie the ribbon around her waist. “Higher,” she says. “Empire.”

I hike the ribbon up, leaving the puffy down vest to bulge beneath it like a pregnant belly.

“So that’s what this is all about?” Ramie says. “You want to go to the prom with Tommy Knutson?”

“Right now I consider him Candidate Number One.”

Ramie hands me a white cashmere beret and I tuck her wild black bramble hair into it.

“He
is
non-ugly,” she says.

Believe it or not, that’s a big statement coming from Ramie. She’s given up on guys until she gets to college, where she fully intends to have an affair with a professor. A
European
professor. No, I’m serious. That’s her plan.

“Before you commit, though,” she says, “let me do some digging.”

I panic. “Ramie, you cannot under any circumstances let Tommy Knutson know I have any interest in him.”

“Spot me some credit, Jill. I said digging, not blabbing.” Ramie turns to the side to evaluate her profile. “Uh, Jill, do you see something wrong with this picture?”

I check out her profile. “Yeah, Rames. You look like a whale.”

“Not that, dummy.” She points to her beret. “White hat. White dress. It’s too matchy matchy.” She rips off the beret and shakes out her wild hair.

“Yeah, Rames. That was the problem with the look. You’ve definitely nailed it now.”

She turns from side to side to examine the full heft of the mal outfit. Somehow it’s managed to make even her skinny legs look fat.

“Chubby Chic?” I say.

I’m joking, of course, but Ramie, psycho that she is, gets that look in her eye.

“No way,” I say.

She nods slowly. “Yes, Jill. Yes.” She grabs both of my shoulders and looks down on me from her extra six inches. “Chubby Chic. That’s perfect.”

“You are
not
wearing that.”

“Oh, yes I am.”

I try to untie the rainbow ribbon around her waist, but she pushes my hand away.

“I am leaving here today with this outfit,” she says. “And I am wearing it to school on Monday.”

She will too. She’ll walk around all day looking like a pink Michelin Man and try to spread the rumor that Chubby Chic is the new black. Weirdest part? Within the week, she’ll have a few imitators.

“Hey, you know,” she says, “maybe you should pull a Steven Price on Tommy Knutson.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, make your own preemptive strike.”

“You mean, ask Tommy Knutson to the prom?”

“Why not?”

I sit on the edge of the bed. “I never thought of that. It wouldn’t be too forward, would it?”

“Guys love it. Take the lead. Why should you wait around for him?”

For Ramie to claim any expertise on what guys love is a bit of a stretch. She’s not exactly a hot property at Winterhead High. Don’t get me wrong. There isn’t a guy at the school who wouldn’t
do
Ramie. But I can’t think of a single one who would
date
her. As Mom never tires of reminding me, I’d be much more popular if I “reconsidered my loyalty to that girl.” But I’m not about being popular. To be honest, the fact that I’m able to live any semblance of a normal teenage life is a surprising bonus, given my potential for catastrophic humiliation. Besides, with Ramie as my BFF, no one can honestly accuse me of being anything but comparatively ordinary.

There is a knock on the door, and Mom breezes right in.

“Hey, Mom,” I say. “How’s the spying?”

Mom hovers in the doorway. “I was going to heat up some soup for lunch, sweetie. Will Ramie be joining us?” She does not look at Ramie as she says this. Mom once called Ramie a “worshipper of chaos.” When I told Ramie, she thought it was cool and threatened to tattoo it on her butt cheek.

“Mom,” I say. “We just ate breakfast.”

“I know, sweetheart. I want to know how much to defrost.” Without making eye contact, she gives Ramie’s outfit the up and down. “Jill, is that your dress?”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m deeply over it.”

Ramie grabs the stack of magazines from my desk. “I’ve got to run. I’ll let you know what I find out about you-know-who.”

“Cool,” I say.

Mom’s eyes follow Ramie as she flees down the hallway and disappears down the stairs.

“Was that the down vest you absolutely had to have and would die if you didn’t get for Christmas?”

“She’s not stealing it, Mom. She’s just borrowing it.”

Mom tugs at the sleeve of her cashmere sweater, then inclines her head at me.

“What?” I say.

“So, you’re concerned about the prom?”

“I’m not concerned, Mom. I just want to go with Tommy Knutson.”

She narrows her eyes at me.

“What!” I say.

“If he wants to go to the prom with you, sweetie, he’ll ask.”

“What if he’s shy?” I say.

Mom sucks in this gigantic breath, like I’ve asked her to explain something deeply obvious. Then she pulls out a paperback, which I’ve just noticed tucked under her arm, and hands it to me.

“The Guide?”
I say.

Mom nods. “We didn’t have this book when I was your age. We had to improvise.”

The subtitle is
Timeless Tips for Landing Mr. Right.
I have a quick flip through it.

“Men are different,” Mom says. “The sooner you learn that, the better.”

“I don’t care about men, Mom. I’m focusing on one man. Tommy Knutson. The rest of them can spontaneously combust as far as I’m concerned.”

I put the book on my desk and start picking up the rejected clothes Ramie has flung about my room, including her own, which she’s left in a pile.

Mom crosses her arms and leans against the doorjamb. “I know it’s hard to believe,” she says, “but even at the ripe old age of seventeen, you may not know everything there is to know.”

“All right,” I say. “I’ll read it.”

She fires one last condescending glare at me, then leaves. On the one hand, I’m not inclined to take Mom’s advice on men. It’s not like her marriage to Dad is anything to brag about. They’ve barely spoken since Dad assumed sole occupancy of our basement. On the other hand, if her stories are to be believed, by the time she graduated from college in Ye Olde Early Eighties, Mom was dripping with “prospects.” No less than six guys proposed to her. Six guys!

And she chose Dad. That’s the bewildering part. But then, he used to be normal. He used to be a corporate lawyer until he ditched his career on “the eve of partnership, for God’s sake,” to use Mom’s oft-repeated phrase. Mom worked two jobs to put him through law school, so she has an understandably bad attitude about that particular decision. As you’ve undoubtedly guessed by now, my parents are annoyingly complicated. I try not to think about it.

So anyway, I go to my desk and glance at the first tip, which is “become a being like no other.” I’m fairly certain I already
am
a being like no other, but the authors have something else in mind. To them, becoming a being like no other means sipping rather than slurping your drink, pausing between sentences, and—I am not kidding here—“if your hair falls into your face, comb it back from the top of your head in a single graceful sweep.”

I turn to my left and practice the move in the mirror above my dresser. It looks deeply fake at first, but when I practice it a few times, it starts to look natural, and I have to admit, there’s something surprisingly elegant about it. It beats sticking your hair behind your ears or, worse, wearing a barrette.

I keep reading. Most of the tips involve variations on the theme of playing hard to get. Things like ending a conversation quickly and never calling a guy on the phone. I can’t help wondering, though: if everyone who reads this book follows its advice, won’t we become beings
just like
every other?