Laura Ruby - Good Girls (9 page)

Joelle adjusted one of the miniscule triangles covering her sizable boobs. "We're not talking about me. And why aren't you off looking for that guy you hooked up with last week? What's-his-name? Nardo?"

"Who?" said Ash.

I lay back down and closed my eyes. I stopped listen- ing to them and tried to listen to myself. I told myself that Ash was right, one hookup didn't necessarily mean another one. It was stupid to get messed up with some- one like him, someone who could have anyone he wanted (and probably did). I heard the happy squeals of this girl and that girl as the guys tossed them around the pool--"Luke! Stop it! Lu-uuke!" See? I said to myself.

111 You had your fun, now move on, leave it alone. But just a half hour later, when I felt a brief squeeze on my big toe and heard Luke's low voice saying "See you," I felt like I might drown in disappointment. I sat up to see Luke walking through the gate at the side of the house. As if my chair had suddenly grown thorns, as if my feet had developed brains and wills of their own, I jumped out of the chair and followed.

"Audrey," Ash said, but I ignored her and ran after him in my bare feet. I caught up with him at his car, an enormous green van.

"Hey," I said.

He turned around and smiled. "Hey."

"Are you leaving?"

"Yeah," he said. "I have to work tonight."

Work? He works, I thought. Some place where other people tell him what to do. It was oddly fascinating. "Where do you work?"

"Rock Garden Restaurant. Here's a tip for you: never eat there. The cooks don't."

"Don't what?"

"Cook." He looked at his watch. "I'd love to hang out longer, but my shift starts at five. I have to go home and change first."

"Oh," I said stupidly. I stood there, suddenly aware that while he'd put on a dry T-shirt, I was standing in the street wearing very few, very small items of clothing. I

112 wrapped my arms around myself--to hide myself, to hug myself, I wasn't sure. My nipples felt like bullets against my forearms.

"I really like that bathing suit," he said.

"You already said that," I told him.

He blinked slowly, as if his lashes were made of lead. "It's worth repeating."

"Oh," I said again. The ball of fire was back, threat- ening to take over my body, the block, the planet. I'd never been so attracted to a guy in my life. It was like there were tiny magnets in my mitochondria, tugging me toward him. Without thinking, I took two giant steps forward.

"Well, hi," he said when I was standing under his nose.

I lifted my face and breathed him in. "Hi and good- bye," I said. "Do I get a kiss?"

Yes, I do.

113

A fter an hour and a half of labor plus

three bottles of dye, one oversized bottle of devel-

oper, one paintbrush thingy, and a hand mirror

so that I can see the back of my head, I'm no

longer a blonde. It takes another forty-five min-

utes to scrub the bathroom sink and tub free of

splotches and smears of dye I'd gotten absolutely

114 everywhere. Only then do I allow myself to take a seri- ous look.

My hair is less the color of dirt and more the black- brown of coffee grounds. Next to all that dark hair, my skin looks paler yet somehow brighter, my eyes gold and lionlike. It's me. And isn't me at all. For some reason, it's different than dyeing your hair a fake color, green or blue or hot pink, the kind of color that people use to piss off their parents or scare old ladies or prove to all the other teenagers that you are so much more wild and crazy and unique than they are. This is a normal color that could be found in nature. So it could be real. I could be this fierce coffee-haired person walking around, this other Audrey, a mirror image of myself. Someone who's never fallen in lust with Luke DeSalvio and so was never "sexually active" with him and never had her photo- graph zipping around cyberspace. Someone who's never been humiliated in front of her entire school and her own parents. I go to bed at three a.m., Stevie the Purr Monster draped across my chest. For the first time in days, I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Four hours later, I drag myself downstairs, Stevie at my heels. My parents are both sitting at the breakfast table, talking in low voices. They both stop and stare when I come into the room. My parents both have brown hair. They always thought my blond hair was this special thing, like a present they got when I was born.

115 They aren't happy.

"Audrey!" says my mom.

"Your hair!" says my dad.

I grab the nearest box of cereal and flop into my seat. Stevie jumps on the table and my dad shoos him off. "It will grow out, okay? Don't give me a hard time about it."

They look at each other, then back at me. "But," my dad says, "your hair was so beautiful."

"It still is," I say.

He doesn't know how to respond to that.

A few minutes later, my mom says, "It does set off your eyes."

"Thanks, Mom."

"If you do it again, maybe you could think about putting in some red highlights."

"Red what? What are you talking about?" says my dad. "Why . . ." He starts again. "What made you change your hair?"

"No reason. This crazy store clerk talked me into it. When I get sick of it, I can always dye it back. Or shave it off."

"Shave it off?" My dad is really becoming alarmed now.

"She's not going to shave it off, John," my mom says.

"How do you know?" I say.

My mom sighs and rolls her eyes toward the ceiling.

116 I haven't seen that in a while, and it makes me feel bet- ter. Then she ruins the mood by saying, "Remember, you have your doctor's appointment at the end of next week."

In the car, Ash can't get over me. "Holy Scheisse!" she says. "What the hell did you do to yourself?"

"I figure that if I have to be all dark and brooding, I should look the part."

"You even did your eyebrows! I've never done my eyebrows."

"Yeah. The package said that you weren't supposed to, that you could, I don't know, go blind or something if you got the stuff in your eyes, but I thought I'd look really dumb with blond eyebrows and brown hair."

Ash leans back in her seat and considers me. "You know what? I like it. It's pretty cool. Hot, actually."

"Thanks."

As she turns into the school parking lot, she says, "But it's not like people won't recognize you. I mean, they still might be talking about that stupid picture. So . . ."

"I know," I tell her. "I get it. It's not a disguise. I just wanted a change, that's all."

But it does work as a disguise, at least a little bit. Some people float by me without seeming to see me, and a lot of others do double takes. I still get comments about the picture, I still hear whispers behind my back,

117 but I keep telling myself that in a few weeks they'll forget. Someday soon, someone will write something outrageous and personal and maybe disgusting about someone else on a blog or a text message or chat, people will get pissed and the rumors will spread, and I'll be old news, no matter what color my hair is. I'll rack up the A's, I'll work on the set for Hamlet--even if there's only a coffee table and a telephone, it will be the best coffee table and telephone that the audience has ever seen. By April, I'll know where I'm going to college; then I can pack up and be off. See ya, kids. Bye-bye, high school. I'll leave this photograph behind while the gargoyle who took it will slink off to whatever circle of hell waits for him.

So I read, I study, I study some more. I admire my toothpick village and wish I were young enough to want to add to it, to disappear into a tiny little house or a train or a windmill. I slog from class to class to class. I'm more chilly than Chilly, I freeze him out. Except for Ash and Joelle, I freeze everyone out. By Friday afternoon, I've aced two tests and gotten an A plus on my Much Ado About Nothing paper from Mr. Lambright. Not bad. It seems that being a dirt-haired ho is pretty good for my grades. I seem to have mastered transitions.

On Saturday, I work in my parents' store, Angel, ringing up evening gowns and bridesmaids' dresses and wedding gowns. Normally, I do everything I can to help

118 people find dresses that flatter them. This time, I tell everyone that they look beautiful even when it's not true, because this is what everyone wants to hear, because it's easier. I let three girls walk out of the store with feather boas. Yes, boas. Nobody wears boas--we've had the same four in stock since the Big Bang--but they didn't know that and I didn't tell them. I feel like a person with a rotten tooth or broken toe: it doesn't hurt enough to ignore the world, and it hurts too much to be patient with it.

Sunday morning. Church. Pastor Narcolepsy is even more hypnotic than usual, or maybe they put drugs in the communion wafers. The sermon is about how one can't really be a true Christian if one doesn't come to church. Which is fine and everything, except we are at church. Wouldn't it be better for the pastor to go find some people who aren't and give them the guilt trip? Like, say, go preach at the mall? I make the mistake of saying this to my parents on the way home.

"I don't know what's gotten into you," my dad says.

"What do you mean?" I say.

"Church is important."

"I didn't say it wasn't important. I'm just saying that it's weird to tell us to come to church when we're already there."

"The pastor was simply reminding us that regular worship is something that God wants," says my dad.

119 On the tip of my tongue: Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my dad? And: How does any- one know what she wants? But Dad finds my idea that God could be a woman amusing, and I really don't feel like amusing him. "Okay," I say, wondering why, all of a sudden, my dad is getting all churchy on me, babbling about what God wants--something he normally doesn't do except when we talk about the obvious stuff, like, Thou shalt not murder each other or steal one another's boyfriends/girlfriends or be nasty, greedy jerks who inflict your nasty, greedy jerkiness on other people. He's even grumbled at Mom's insistence that we go to church every week--he could open the store a few hours earlier if we didn't--and doesn't think it's funny when she tells him that she needs to repent for all those nice people she's killed with sewing scissors in her books.

I want to say, Look, Dad, some of us aren't doing so well handling the big stuff that God wants, so going to church every three seconds seems pretty minor. As a matter of fact, I think that church is one of those things that seems like a good idea but actually isn't that great in practice. Like, who would think that getting everyone together to talk and sing about God and goodness and love and Heaven and Jesus wouldn't be a fun thing? So why isn't it a fun thing, or even an interesting thing most of the time? Why isn't it more useful? Why don't they give practical lessons on how to deal with hot guys with-

120 out having to wear a freaking chastity belt? Why are you always thinking about something else when you're there? Like the way the hook on your bra is digging into your back or the fact that the lady in front of you is wearing enough perfume to wipe out vast colonies of insects.

I don't know, I'll have to ask Joelle about temple. Maybe going to temple is different.

My dad looks in the rearview mirror, frowning deeply. He's been frowning deeply a lot. I have a name for that frown: it's the I-don't-know-you-anymore frown. The you-have-turned-into-someone-I-don't- understand frown.

Maybe I have.

Monday, study period. Chilly drops into the chair next to me, whistling. "Hey, baby. Don't think I got your name."

"Get away from me."

"Never heard that name before."

"You hear it all the time," I say.

"Do any photo shoots lately?"

I press my lips together and wait for the bell to ring so that he will Shut. Up. Already. Tayari Smith, gorgeous Tayari Smith, gives me a sympathetic look across the table, and in my reptilian brain I remember a story from eighth grade, something about how Tayari did some- thing to or with some boy in the back of the bus on the

121 way home from school and got suspended for it. I sud- denly, desperately, want to be her friend. Maybe she can teach me what to do with my new dark hair. Maybe she can show me how to twist it and braid it and curl it into crazy corkscrews, a new do every day. Maybe I'll learn how to give other girls sympathetic looks over tables in study periods, I'll see how to get my dignity back.

"I was thinking," says Chilly. "You should send that picture in with your college applications. Might be the deciding factor. I know! You could take more photos. I can help."

Something about the way he says this makes me think. Did Chilly have a camera at that party? I don't remember a camera, but what if he did have one? What if he stole a camera and followed me upstairs? What if he snuck up behind us in the bedroom and . . .

"Was it you?" I say. My voice sounds like someone else's, like an echo from a radio.

"Me? What are you talking about? You can't even remember who you blew?"

"Did you take the picture?"

Chilly smiles. "What do you think?" He lifts his hands and makes like he's pressing a button.

I wasn't mad before, I wasn't, but that was the old Audrey, not the new, fierce coffee-haired Audrey. I hate Chilly, I hate him, and maybe he hates me, too, maybe he hates me more, but this is someone I went out with,

122 someone I made out with. He was the first guy I let up my shirt. How could he do this to me?

Before I know it, I've leaped out of my chair and smacked him as hard as I can across his face. Someone grabs my arms from behind. Chilly keeps laughing. Mrs. Sayers shouts, "Audrey! What is going on here? What is going on?"

I'm sent to the office. You can't have girls hauling off and smacking guys around. No, that is not done. Could set a bad precedent. Could be lousy for morale.

"Audrey, I'm surprised," says Mr. Zwieback, the vice principal.

I look at my feet. Of course you're surprised, I want to say. You have the name of a cracker they give to babies. "I'm surprised, too," I tell him.

"Can you tell me why you decided to hit Mr. Chillman in study period?"

Well, gee, uh, I wanted to wait until lunch, but I was all booked up. "I don't know. He made me mad."

"Does this have anything to do with a certain picture that's been making the rounds?"

"What?" I say. Mr. Zwieback's seen the picture? Mr. Zwieback? Mr. Zwieback has a basset-hound face and long sideburns--no, not the cool kind. He wears plaid-- also not the cool kind. Mr. Zwieback grew up some- where in the South and occasionally says "y'all." It's impossible that he's seen the picture. Impossible.

123 A red flush creeps up Mr. Zweiback's neck. "Several copies were found on the computers in the library, though we had trouble identifying the, uh, subjects. But your father did call me to discuss the picture," he says. "He told me that it's been sent from student to student. He was quite upset."

I close my eyes and hope for death.

Mr. Zwieback clears his throat. "I understand that something like that could make you angry. I would be angry. Now, if you're sure that Mr. Chillman was, uh, involved in the situation somehow, I can talk to him. I can make sure he's punished for it."

Of course I want to punish him. I want him drawn and quartered. I want him burned at the stake. But if I make a bigger deal of this, then everyone will be reminded all over again. I don't want any more copies of that picture pasted to my locker or in my e-mail box or on my phone. I want it over. "Chilly likes harassing me. He's been doing it forever. I got sick of it."

"I don't want to embarrass you, but I promised your father I would keep an eye out for any trouble. If some- one at this school has victimized you or forced you--"

A lightning strike would be perfect right about now. A massive mudslide. A stampede of zebras. "Nobody forced me to do anything, Mr. Zwieback."

Mr. Zwieback frowns, as if he has no idea what to make of this. Of course I was victimized, of course I was

124 forced. Nice girls are forced, honors students are forced. If I wasn't forced . . .

He taps a pen methodically on the top of his desk, tap, tap, tap. "Several of the teachers and administrators were in favor of taking action against you."

I'm so surprised that my eyeballs almost pop from my face. "What? What do you mean?"

"I'm not saying I agree with them, but some people feel that our top students should set a better example."

I can't speak. I should set a better example, but not Luke. No, that boy's obviously doing just dandy as he is. It's those girls that you have to watch. Girls are tricky. I see Mr. Zwieback eyeing my hair and I wonder what he thinks of the dye job, if he thinks that I tried to change the inside by changing the outside, the way that other kids do. But my inside had already changed, had gone odd and dark somehow. All I did was match it. I stare at Mr. Zwieback until he looks down at his desk.