Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here (12 page)

She shook her head. “In that case, congratulations, because you’re more like Jason Tous than you think you—”

Goddamn it, the doorbell’s ringing.

“—are.
”

“Be there in a sec!” I yell. The response is a wordless shriek of fear, like a time-traveling Puritan who just saw her first car.

I click Post, then trudge to the door and open it to find Avery on the stoop, looking petrified, clutching four dresses on hangers underneath clear dry-cleaner cellophane and an industrial-sized makeup bag. She seems taller. It takes a second before I realize it’s because she’s not forced into crone position by a Jansport containing four math textbooks and the entire Western canon.

“I’m freaking out,” she says in the measured tone of someone trying to stop freaking out. She walks past me inside, throws the dresses and makeup on the sofa, then sprawls out on her back on the floor.

“Fuck,” she says. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Okay, calm down.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” she says in a monotone, staring blankly at the ceiling. “I’m overthinking it even though I know that’s just making it worse.”

“Dude, it’s just a dance.”

“I watched some YouTube tutorials on how to do a smoky eye, and now I look like a raccoon.”

“Noooo! You look like Margot Tenenbaum!” I am an unconvincing liar.

She props herself up on her elbows and glares at me. “Don’t undermine my intelligence.”

“Okay, you’re right, sorry. You look like a raccoon. A
pretty
raccoon.”

Avery gets up and jokingly starts fake-going through the garbage, making raccoon noises, laughing. I double over, cracking up.

“Hang on a second. Dawn has makeup remover somewhere.” I retreat to the bathroom and rummage around in the medicine cabinet until I find it.

Two barely defrosted shots of Dawn’s freezer Svedka and an hour on Pinterest studying tutorials with names like “daytime smoky eye” and “~*~*prom hair~*~*” later, we still haven’t managed to steer Avery’s makeup away from ~*~*dumpster-diving varmint~*~**~.

“I need more of those pads!” she moans despondently, meaning the eye makeup–remover pads of Dawn’s that we’ve been burning through. On my way to the bathroom to grab some more, I glance into my room, where the door is ajar, and see that the group chat is already on fire.

DavidaTheDeadly: so, the OC love triangle emerges . . . still think you could have made gidbot p. interesting from a character angle but whatev

WillianShipper2000: agree!!!!

DavidaTheDeadly: though it is nice to see that a
(half-)Ordinaria can think for herself.

xLoupxGaroux: Are you kidding me with this? Two words: Mary. Sue.

DavidaTheDeadly: gahhhhh. give it another installment at least!

xLoupxGaroux: Um, sweetie? 1) Half-breed. 2) High morals/ideals and terribly judgmental of others. 3) Looks fiercer than anybody else in eveningwear without trying. 4) Captivates main male protagonist without doing anything to earn it, really. Either our girl Scarface has been reading too much Ayn Rand (translation: any Ayn Rand) or this is a clear-cut Mary Sue issue.

Scarface: WAY HARSH, TAI. BTW: if you are 14 and read The Fountainhead you don’t even notice the politics, it’s really just a romance novel. Kind of a good one actually.

xLoupxGaroux: I’m gonna pretend you never said that. In fact, can you wipe my brain?

“Scar, where
are
you?!” Avery yells from the living room.

“Sorry! Give me just a sec!”

WillianShipper2000: who is ayn rand even

WillianShipper2000: is she the one who has that advice column

xLoupxGaroux: Scar, I’m serious. Please brush up on the definition of MARY SUE on the “About Us/Rules” page and do a close read. I don’t want to establish a pattern of lenience with this.

Scarface: dude . . . Do you really think she’s a Mary Sue?

xLoupxGaroux: She’s just too perfect. I want to see her be a real person. Not some idealistic fake paragon of virtue that is clearly a stand-in to make up for your terror of potentially having fun at a party.

Scarface: WTF?

xLoupxGaroux: Whole lot easier staying in and writing yourself brave instead of going out and BEING brave, is all I’m saying.

Scarface: What even are you

Scarface: OK, I guess that’s valid.

WillianShipper2000: ok w8 bump to above question about Ayn Rand tho u guys.

xLoupxGaroux: Jesus. No, that’s Ann Landers. Google it.

WillianShipper2000: No bc everything you tell me to Google is #BORING #OLD #PERSON #STUFF

xLoupxGaroux: If I have to know what “on fleek” means, you have to know some boring old person stuff.

Their banter lets me exit quietly and gracefully from the
chat, still smarting. Nauseated, I click on About Us in the upper left-hand corner and open the Mary Sue litmus test. It reads:

Hey, everybody! Everyone’s encouraged to take risks in their fanfics, and for the most part, aside from hateful content or target harassment of anybody else on the board, anything goes. But it would be supercool to leave the Mary Sue stories—self-insertion into the
Lycanthrope
universe, based on the writer’s wish fulfillment—at the door! Don’t know if your original character is a Mary Sue? That’s cool! Find out now.

IS YOUR OC A MARY SUE?

1) Does your character have the same name as you or a name that is a variant of yours, such as a nickname or different spelling?

Oh, god
damn it
.

2) Does your character look a lot like you?

3) Is your character the youngest in his/her given profession and also the most brilliant?

4) Does your character share strong opinions and beliefs with you?

5) Does he or she often state these opinions, argue with other characters about them, or try to win them over?

6) Does your character get listened to, followed, and respected more than his or her age, position, and experience would merit?

7) Is your character a hybrid of two races?

8) If so, is this hybrid race in any way “tragic” or “cursed”?

There’s a loud knock at the door, and I dart through the living room to answer it, vaulting over the couch and scrambling nearly directly over Avery, who is wiping off her eye makeup as she warily eyes her phone, which is facedown on the coffee table.

“Who’s here now, Gene Hackman?”

From outside: “It’s Ashley!” More knocks. “Hell-ooooo?”

I summon my coldest glare at Avery, and she looks slightly guilty for a second but then throws her arms up with haplessly self-righteous attitude.

“She’s good at this stuff! Okay? Get off my dick! Just be a normal human being for once. Please. I know you can do it.” She wads up her third eye makeup–remover pad and tosses it into an empty coffee cup on the table. “I know things are weird between you guys, but she’s not that bad, I swear.”

I wave her off, taking pity on her, and open the door. Ashley’s already in her dress for the dance, a cute black baby-doll-style cocktail dress that looks irritatingly perfect with her hair.

“Hey, Divider!” She smiles a big, toothy smile at me. “How excited are you for the dance!”

“Not going,” I mutter, shuffling backward to let her in.

“Why? Too lame for you?”

“I’ve got plans later!” I sardonically try to match her bright tone.

“Whatcha doing?”

“I’m being executed by the state!”

Ashley seems not to hear me as she glows around my
apartment, idly picking things up, seeming to judge how much they cost, and putting them back down in ways that very clearly
show
how much she thinks they cost.

“It’s cute here.” She can’t resist a passive-aggressive dig, adding, “
Cozy
.”

“Ashley,” shrieks Avery. “Help much?”

“Right. Yeah, totally. Okay, well. Oh—is that my dress?” Ashley stares at the navy dress Avery’s wearing. Avery shrugs and tugs at its scalloped lace hem.

“Is that cool?”

“Of course. It looks hot on you! Very Kate Middy. Because, I mean”—she laughs, so lilting that you can almost picture the musical notes they’d use in closed-captioning—“I’m pretty obviously Pippa. Anyways, let’s do this thing.”

Ashley dumps the entire contents of her makeup bag onto the floor, and Avery slides off the sofa. They’re both huddled on the carpet over the makeup like it’s a fire keeping them warm. Ashley murmurs something to herself, then selects an eyeliner and leans in toward Ave until their identical strawberry blond heads are nearly touching. I feel a pang and wish, like I sometimes do, that Matilda and I were closer in age.

“Hey, Scarlett, have you got any nail polish remover?” Ashley waits a beat, then frowns a little and repeats, “Scarlett?”

I snap to attention, at this point totally used to her addressing me as Divider.

“Yeah, um, yeah, I’ll get it.”

As I head down the hall to Dawn’s room, the familiar iPhone
text alert chimes from the living room. I nearly reach for my own phone anyway, a Pavlovian response.

“Oh God, he’s texting me!” Avery yells from the other room.

“What did he say?” I yell back.

There’s a pause as ostensibly she opens the text.

“
Sup!
” she shrieks, like the final girl in a horror movie.

Ashley works quickly. In twenty minutes, Avery has gone from ferret to fetching (which I’d watch the shit out of on Bravo). The makeup is flawless. The dress is classy but sexy. Her hair is simple but cute, just a few bobby pins drawing her bangs off her face. Mission accomplished.

“You look amazing,” I assure her.

“Really?”

“Yes, totally.”

“Thanks. Thank you. Sorry for . . .” She jerks her head, cockeyed, toward Ashley, who is checking her phone.

“Please, this is what I’m here for.”

“Babe, we gotta go,” Ashley interjects, a little more frozen over than she’d been just a second ago.

Avery nods stiffly, still looking incredibly nervous, picks up the little clutch she’s chosen for the night, and heads for the door.

“Bye.”

“See you, Divider,” Ashley says flippantly as she waltzes out the front door. We had a good run with my God-given name for a minute there.

“Bye, have fun!”

Avery takes one step out the door, then she runs back and grabs my arm.

“You have to come with me.”

“Ew. What? No.”

“What if it’s bad? Like, what if we have nothing to talk about, or dancing is awkward, or he tries to have sex with me?”

“Is he gonna?” I ask, startled.

“I have no idea! That’s the point!”

Ashley dips backward through the doorway, grabbing the frame for support, and chirps, “You tell him
I
said you can’t.”

“But maybe I want to!”

Ashley gets an odd look on her face and says, “I had sex for the first time after a school dance when I ‘maybe’ wanted to, and it was awful.”

Ave and I both look at her, taken aback. She shrugs, sort of sadly. The moment ends when Avery’s phone chimes.

“Oh, it’s him again.”

She opens the text and reads it: “Where letter-R letter-U.”

I roll my eyes. “Right out of Jane Austen.”

“Please come, Scar. I’ll owe you. I’ll watch a whole season of
Lycanthrope
with you. I’ll do your take-home math tests.”

“You already do that.”

She stops pleading and looks a little indignant. “Yeah. I do. So actually, you owe
me
.”

I think of what Loup said about writing myself brave. Its accuracy is irritating. By staying inside and fantasizing instead
of actually going out and doing something normal teenagers do, I accidentally Mary Sue’d myself to the first degree in front of my friends, writers that I respect. It’s so humiliating. And it stops now.

“Okay,” I say.

“Really?!” she squeals, jumping up and down.

“Yes.”

Avery scoops up the makeup bag and tosses it to Ashley, who semi-begrudgingly catches it and comes back inside, shutting the door behind her.

“Your turn!”