The Girl with the Mermaid Hair (8 page)

S
UKIE examined the hole in the mirror. Had it been there yesterday? This morning? How could she not have noticed it? Had she poked the mirror? With what?

“My beautiful mirror.” Sukie, distressed, saw her reflected face full of awful creases her mother had warned against. She tried not to show her upset, to will her features into indifference, but expression (and creases) kept creeping in. “Did you do this, Señor? Somehow, did you?”

Señor rolled on his side and closed his eyes. Conversation was useless. Besides, she was late.

She assembled various liquid bases and experimented. On the first try, she glopped it on her nose
as thick as peanut butter. She scraped it off and began again…and again…and again—patting it lightly, wiping with minisponges, lighter on the sides, heavier on the ramp, striping not blending, blending not striping. Her eyes strayed to the hole in the mirror.

She pressed her body flat against the glass. Such an odd thing to do, she didn’t know why the urge came upon her or why she acted on it. The hole in the mirror was approximately at the location of her heart. She stepped back and touched it lightly with her fingers. It was small and perfectly round. For a second she lost herself in fantasy. This puncture was proof—she’d dueled with Bobo in an enchanted forest. The tip of his sword had pierced her heart. Or perhaps it was an omen—the surrender was yet to come.

Stop, she scolded herself, get real, and she returned to the serious problem, her nose. Remixing the makeup, lightening “sand” with a bit of “bisque,” she sponged on a few dabs. After viewing her nose in various lights, natural and artificial, she was finally satisfied. She’d neutralized “ramp.” She’d successfully doctored her most exotic feature. It was now innocuous. Bland. Finally she was ready to take her nose to meet Bobo.

As for the rest of her face, she kept it simple: six
coats of mascara (letting each dry before the next), lip pencil brightened with a coral gloss selected from a minicompact of four corals mysteriously named Pink Devil. “The devil is in me,” she told the mirror before diving into her closet and the problem of what to wear. She made a radical choice: a short red suede jacket with a fringe, something she’d almost forgotten she owned. “Hello, what is this?” she said upon spying it. Solving her nose made her brave, even jocular, and she completed the rest of her choices quickly—skinny jeans, her pink grapefruit heels of course, and snug-fitting layered T-shirts (tawny over tangerine). She blew kisses to Señor as she left. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” She was so grateful to him for wrecking her flatman and knocking her to the floor.

“Come in, darling, let’s have a look at you,” called her mom.

Her parents were in the living room but not together. In her journal Sukie had noted the difference between being together and being in the same room at the same time. Her parents were often the latter and rarely the former. Even when they strolled side by side, they seemed to be in separate spaces. Sukie could assess
her parents’ moods. She knew, for instance, when her dad was edgy or her mom was “stalky”—looking for a reason to pounce. Her radar was defensive. They would as easily pick on her as each other. She would go right to her room and do homework. Sometimes she ran a bath and did the mermaid float. Occasionally if her parents argued loudly late at night, Mikey crawled into her bed and they both buried their heads under pillows.

Today there was a détente between her parents, a temporary relaxing of tension between battling nations. Her mom, thumbing through a magazine, was tucked into an armchair, curled up like a cat. Her dad had taken possession of the couch. Seated on the center cushion, he hunched over his work papers strewn across the coffee table. At the same time, he wielded the remote, switching back and forth between football games.

“You look beautiful,” said her mom. “Pretty enough to be in this.” She held up
Vogue
.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Her dad looked over now and whistled.

“Your father is taking up golf. He’s going to the driving range today. He’s sick of tennis. Don’t you
think you should eat something?”

“I’m not hungry,” said Sukie. So her hunch had been correct. He wasn’t going back to the club. “Am I still going to take lessons from Vince?”

“Of course,” said her mom. “Unless, little copycat, you’re switching to golf, too. But you can’t because you’re committed to tennis. And you’re a terrific player. ‘Captain of the tennis team’ looks a lot more impressive on a college application than ‘I golf for fun.’ Did you meet him on Facebook?”

“Meet who?”

“This quarterback?”

“No. Dad, come on.”

“Is your Facebook clean?”

“Clean? What does that mean?”

“I have no idea. Mr. Vickers mentioned it. I suppose not dirty. Nothing to be ashamed of. Where did you meet him?”

“At the mall. I know some friends of his.” A lie but not a big lie. She did know a few of his friends because he’d introduced them to her. “Dad?”

“Did you see that?” said her dad.

“Holding,” said Sukie. “Why didn’t the ref call it?”

“Atta girl—you never miss a thing.” He clicked off
the game and dropped the remote. “I’ll get my jacket and clubs and meet you at the car.”

“Can we see your Facebook?” asked her mom.

Sukie hurried away.

“Susannah!”

“I’m not on Facebook.”

“What do you mean you’re not on Facebook?” Her mother sprang from the chair.

Sukie knew what had happened. The worry of what her daughter might be up to on Facebook had yielded to an even greater anxiety: What’s wrong with Sukie that she isn’t on Facebook?

Sukie powered on and out the front door. Her mom would never follow. She wasn’t allowed to be in the sun for a month, her skin was too tender. Even though the sky today was blanketed with thick dark clouds, Sukie was safe because, as her mom had explained only yesterday, the sun could beam those ultraviolets right through.

From the doorway her mother begged, “Sukie, I’m trying to have a conversation.” But Sukie pretended that her mom was speaking to the wind, and the wind would carry her words over the trees and far away.

“Just tell me, sweetie, why aren’t you on Facebook?”

Sukie concentrated on managing her spiked heels on the gravel driveway, although for a second she considered turning and screaming, “Because I hate you.”

But that wasn’t the reason.

She wasn’t on Facebook because she couldn’t complete the questionnaire. It demanded originality. Even the simplest query. After hours of staring at it empty-headed, she had cruised her classmates. Under religion, Autumn had written, “Found God in prison.” How brilliant was that? Frannie’s favorite movie was foreign. Really foreign, like Italian.
Il Postino
, it was called. Sukie had heard her talk about it in school, how sad it was, how much her dad had loved it. Sukie had never even seen a film in a foreign language. How could she confess that her favorite movie was
The Princess Diaries
? And that looming blank…the one she couldn’t fathom answering: Favorite Quotation. Sukie’s head had nearly crashed down on the keyboard at the sight of it. She had no idea what to put, but everyone else did. Even Jenna, who didn’t seem deep-deep, only average deep, had a great quote. Sukie had copied it down. “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche. James had quoted himself. “Broccoli is better overcooked.” Was that even true? Sukie had no idea. Plus, who cared about broccoli, but didn’t that make his quote even more inspired and unique? Even drippy Ethan had an Ethiopian proverb. Ethiopia was not the coolest place to have a proverb from, but still the quote was interesting and political, just like Ethan. “When spiders unite, they can tie up a lion.”

But the worst part of Facebook were the photos. Everyone posted photos of themselves having fun. With friends.

Her dad opened the car door, tossed his clubs over the front seat into the back, and climbed in behind the wheel. “Let’s get out of here.”

As they backed out, Sukie peered up. Sunlight streamed though a rent in the clouds. “The sun coming out means nothing,” she told herself. “Expect. Nothing.”

U
NLIKE Cobweb, a modest and meandering wood-and-glass structure shaded by tall oaks and pines, Hudson Glen High sat on a huge expanse of cleared earth. The school was a three-story imposing brick edifice with columns built into the façade. It could have been a president’s birthplace, Sukie decided, someone like Thomas Jefferson’s. Behind the school were two rows of trailers, extra classrooms for its enormous student body of two thousand, and a long, low, windowless gymnasium constructed of metal that looked silvery in sunlight. Beyond that lay the athletic fields—track, baseball, and football. The football field had bleachers stretching along one side, with pennants (Hudson Glen Hawks, white on
black, the school colors) rippling across the top.

Swarms of people converged from all directions. Some, like Sukie, had been dropped off in front of the school, others parked in the lot next to the field, and still others arrived from Mason Street, which bordered the opposite side.

Everyone was headed for a good time, and Sukie was one of them.

She didn’t mind that she didn’t know anyone. It was exciting, like arriving in the city after living one’s whole life in a small peasant village. The way Madame Bovary must have felt when she talked her boring husband into moving from Tostes to Yonville, or when she entered the ball at the chateau and the
vicomte
asked her to dance. “I am here to dance with Bobo. Bobo wants me. Hi, I’m here. Hey, well hey. So real. So real life.” The conversation she was having with herself was so involving and compelling that she was smiling unself-consciously when, after the long walk, she finally stepped off the asphalt path onto the athletic fields.

The ground felt soft, squishy, spongy.

She hesitated before looking down but then seemingly of its own accord her head fell forward
and she saw her shoes. She had stepped onto a patch of grass so soggy from rain that it was nearly liquid, and her shoes were disappearing much the way a car driven into a lake submerges slowly until, with a pop, it’s gone.

Faced with this catastrophe and the notion as sudden as a smack on the head that she must solve it immediately or be humiliated for life, her mind froze.

People streaked and streamed about her. She might be no more than a sign on a freeway, one of those innocuous ones like
FOOD GAS REST
. Girls gossiped in cliques. Friends shared peanuts and popcorn, whapped each other with red licorice vines, shouted orders to pals at the front of concession-stand lines. Some, heads down, worked BlackBerrys. Others nearly knocked Sukie over, so preoccupied were they with their cell conversations. Parents shepherded their children around her. One toddler bounced along, his rain boots making happy smacking sounds on the wet grass. That’s when she realized, and how could it have escaped her notice? The foot gear. Every single person wore rain boots or athletic shoes of some sort. They were all prepared for mud.

Only Sukie was in party shoes. Only Sukie.

Was she sinking with no end in sight? Had she located the only square foot of quicksand in the entire United States?

Sukie had been afraid of quicksand ever since, at age five, she’d seen a picture of it in a book, sandy ground and two arms sticking out waving feebly, and no one around to throw a log. Being thrown a log was the only way to get out of quicksand, according to the book. While Sukie rationally knew this wasn’t quicksand, she still got blindsided by the fear as if it had been lying in wait for a moment of intense vulnerability to launch an attack.

Wouldn’t a friend be helpful right this second? If only she had a friend. A friend would save her. “Hey, Sukie, I’m here, don’t worry, I’m throwing a log.”

She would hang on to that log for dear life while the friend hauled her and it to solid earth, all the while talking her down. What a comfort it must be to be talked out of panic and to safety by a good friend.

She was deep into the wish for it when she realized with relief that her feet had stabilized, although her heels were so deep in mud that they were nearly as
fixed as goal posts. Sukie pulled out her phone and feigned intense interest in nonexistent emails and calls. She pretended for a half hour, until nearly everyone had climbed into the stands and she could see where it was safe to walk. She stepped out of her heels, dislodged her ruined shoes from the mud, and walked lightly on the balls of her bare feet to privacy, the back of the hot-dog stand. Her shoes were dripping and disgusting, all the pretty doily holes clogged. First she wiped them on wet grass, then extracted the little packet of tissues she kept in her purse in a zippered compartment, and used them to smear off the rest of the gunk. When she reached down to clean off her feet, her hair fell into her face. She tried to push it back with her forearm and, when it fell again, used her hand, and soon she had mud and bits of grass on her face. On her carefully sculpted nose.

She slipped her soaked shoes back on, a most unpleasant feeling, and squished along the side of the bleachers. Every time her feet pressed down in her shoes, she produced water. It was as if she were juicing them. They made sounds, too, gurgles, and her feet were numb from cold. She rounded the front of the bleachers. The warmups were over, teams
huddled with their coaches for final instructions, some players jumping and twisting, broncos desperate to break out of the pen. She spotted Bobo’s number and watched while, for luck, he banged fists with his teammates and trotted back onto the field. “Hey there,” she murmured him a hello. “I hope you don’t mind my shoes.” That amused and perked her up a bit. Cheerleaders and pom-pom girls were performing acrobatically. “Give me an H, give me an A, give me…” Sukie yelled enthusiastically, “W-K-S.”

Now she scanned to the top of the first set of bleachers. It was overstuffed with fans. Proceeding along, she kept her head down, not wanting to attract attention. People might notice her filthy shoes. At a loud screeching “Woo,” she snapped up. Harry the Hawk, all seven feathered feet of him, flapped toward her and with a whoosh enveloped her in his gigantic damp and smelly wings. Terrifying, pitch dark, no air. Just as quickly he released her. The crowd hooted as Harry began reeling drunkenly, kicking up his huge plastic yellow talons and flapping his wings, trying to bat Sukie this way and that. She dodged the bird to great laughter and ran. She didn’t stop until, nearly breathless and exhausted, she had climbed
high into the second set of bleachers, more sparsely populated.

She edged down a row to an empty spot, realizing when she got there that the seat had a big puddle on it. “Sit your ass down,” a man shouted. Sukie twisted around. Right behind her was a beefy guy, naked from the waist up, with six other beefy guys, also naked from the waist up. Weren’t they cold? Each had a large capital letter painted on his hairy bare chest. She arched back to read—what possessed her to think she should? For such a good and obedient A-student, any string of letters meant reading was required. “Finster?”

“The quarterback,” he said. “Down.”

Sukie put her suede purse on the puddle and sat on it. The woman next to her, cradling a plastic container of fried chicken, pinched a leg with a pink paper napkin and offered it.

“No, thanks,” said Sukie.

“Let me know if you change your mind. Where’s your hat?”

“I don’t have a hat.”

The woman pulled a green cap from under her arm and put it on.

“Bobo’s the quarterback. Bobo Deeb.” Sukie turned to enlighten the painted man who leaped up, shrieking with glee. She wheeled back around. The Hawks had kicked off and the Poughkeepsie running back was tacking skillfully through the Hawk defense. Everyone stood and screamed until he was finally tackled after a gain of twenty yards. Sukie, depressed by that, was the only person who sat down immediately. Folks slapped palms over Sukie’s head, reaching up, down, and around, before settling on the bench again and launching a chant: “Bulls, Bulls, Bulls.”

It was then that she noticed all the green caps. They dotted the rows below. In front of her bleachers, cheerleaders bounced up and down in green skirts and white sweaters. “Bulls, Bulls, Bulls.” A baton twirler tossed her green baton into the air. The paint on the half-naked men’s chests was green. She was sitting in the wrong stands. She was sitting with the enemy. With the fans of Poughkeepsie High.

Sukie shrank. She simply deflated. It was as if she took up no more space on that bench than a wrinkled balloon. All her positive attitude, although tempered with “expect nothing” but still leaning
positive…now gone. She couldn’t relocate, it was too late, too traumatic—her shoes, the possibility of another encounter with the giant bird. Besides, that first set of bleachers for Hawks fans was packed to capacity.

She watched the entire game in silence, barely moving. Barely, it seemed, breathing. Not once did she get to shout, “Go-Bo, Bobo.” It would have been weird, surrounded as she was by Bullmania, maybe even dangerous. The half-naked man behind her might bean her with his Bull-light, flashlights all the Bulls fans carried. They aimed them at the field and one another, even though it was afternoon and the lights didn’t project. Were they morons? Idiots? Sukie entertained herself with thoughts of their low IQs. How understandable, even inevitable, that she would blame them for something she felt about herself. She was the truly stupid one, sitting in the wrong stands. Not only couldn’t she cheer Bobo, but she had to sit there meekly when the crowd around her heaped insults on him. “Boo-hoo Bobo” and “Bobo Boob-O.” She had to swallow a gasp of fear when the entire Bulls front line rushed and crushed him. One by one his tormentors rose, until only he
remained facedown in mud. It was a frightening wait for Sukie until Bobo pushed himself to his knees and, shunning assists from his teammates, finally stood…frightening not only because he might be hurt but also because, if he was hurt, he wouldn’t be able to meet her after. He’d be at the hospital being rolled into a CT scan machine. At one point a man poked her and said, “Hey grass-face, why so sad, we’re going to win.” And they did. At the very last second, the Hawks blew a field goal and the Bulls beat them, 21–19. She was sad for Bobo and sad for herself. Grass-face? Was there grass on her face? How could she take a selfie to find out? Not in front of these people. Besides, there was no way to get into her purse. She was sitting on it, the metal buckle jamming her butt.

She stayed put until everyone else had left. She thought about going home, about whether to call her dad to pick her up, but Bobo had had such a hard time, losing in a squeaker. If she stood him up, how cruel would that be? She had to show up for their rendezvous. She owed it to him.

In the privacy of the empty bleachers, she took a selfie and discovered grass blades speckling her face,
mud on her forehead, and her nose makeup streaked.

Her suede purse was soggy and one side was discolored. Although it was a shoulder bag, she dangled it from her hand, grasped so that the good side faced out, and trekked down out of the stands. Carefully selecting solid earth, she made her way to the gymnasium, stopping first at a place she’d sworn she’d never enter, a Porta-Potty. There she quickly cleaned herself up, smoothed her nose makeup, freshened her lip gloss, and spoke as confidently as she could to her reflection in the small blotchy mirror hanging over the molded rubber sink. “Hi, Bobo, you played a great game. Great. Great.” She tried that word several times. It kept sounding fake and forced. “Great!” Finally she managed to infuse it with a lively energy.

Outside the locker-room door, the atmosphere was grim. Parents slumped listlessly on concrete benches. As more showed up, they greeted in ways that acknowledged the grief: faint nods, half smiles, limp waves. Their younger children—siblings of players—quickly tired of the sadness and moved on to chasing, pushing, and complaining. Could they go to McDonald’s and how soon? Adults who conversed spoke softly, and Sukie,
straining to eavesdrop, discovered that the Hawks had lost three consecutive games and were therefore out of the running. For what, she wasn’t sure, she presumed the league championship. The entire pep squad, about twenty girls, comforted one another, hugging, a few wiping tears.

Sukie stationed herself a little apart but in view of the locker-room door. Bobo could easily spot her. She didn’t want to tax his brain and make him dig her out of the mob after he’d suffered so. No flirty hide-and-seek game, it wouldn’t be appropriate. Close by, four heartbroken cheerleaders discussed Hunters, the kind of rain boots that Sukie owned but unfortunately hadn’t worn.

“I think my boots are too big.”

“Meg, you have to buy a size smaller.”

“No, two sizes smaller,” said another. “I bought a six and normally I wear an eight. God, this is tragic.” Her eyes fixed on an empty spot in the distance, and darkened as if she were absorbing the horror of the Hawks loss all over again. Her friends gazed with her into the bleak.

“They’re sold out at Gilroy’s,” said Meg after a moment.

“They still have some at coolboots.com,” said Sukie.

Meg cruised Sukie from her bedhead down to her grass-and mud-stained heels, then flicked up to Sukie’s face again.

Sukie tucked a hand under her hair and flipped the ends up.

Meg slipped off her velvet scrunchee. Her straight chestnut hair dropped to her shoulders. She pulled it up, smoothed the sides, and refastened it.

By way of a reply Sukie threaded her fingers languorously through her waves, lifted them into a curly nest, twisted them together, and then, in a maneuver requiring excellent coordination, simultaneously tossed her head and opened her hands. Her hair tumbled loose and cascaded.

Meg blew upward at her bangs.

Bang blowing, that’s what she tries to top me with, Sukie thought with disgust. No one can beat me in a hair-off. She pushed her thick, tangled, golden locks from one side of her head to the other and then, while they all watched gaga (at least that was her impression), she pushed it back. “Is this where the team…?” said Sukie. “I’m meeting Bobo.”

A girl stopped picking at her pom-pom to crush a cigarette under her heel and pass the word to other kids who were standing there. “She’s meeting Bobo.”