The Princesses of Iowa (11 page)

“Maybe!” I exclaimed, smiling in spite of myself.

Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Have you seen Lacey?”

“In the five minutes I’ve been talking to you?” I asked. “Uh, no.”

Nikki pulled her cell phone out of her purse and checked the time. “Shit, I have a meeting with . . . I have to go!” She spun on her trendy heels and hurried toward the school. Halfway to the door, she turned and yelled back at me. “See you tonight!”

I turned back toward the parking lot, shaking my head. She was a spaz, but I loved her.

Lacey grabbed me just before I reached my car. “Have you seen Nikki? She was supposed to meet me out here.”

“Oh, you’re talking to me now?”

Lacey’s expression was blank.

I sighed. “I just saw her. She was looking for you.”

“Well I don’t see her now, do you?” Lacey stamped her cane in irritation. It had been painted like a yellow-and-white candy cane, school colors, with girls’ names running up and down it. It looked like the work of the dance team, or maybe the juniors in student council.

I looked around. “Uh, no.”

When I turned back, she was studying me, her eyes pale blue in the afternoon sun. I noticed that she was wearing white eyeliner, and I wondered when that had started. Strange, how I could remember every detail of her so clearly from one day last spring — her outfit, her hair, every word she said — and put it all on paper, but now every detail of her face looked unfamiliar. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Are you stoned?”

My head was still in class. “We got this new creative writing teacher —”

“Yeah, I heard he’s a real fag,” Lacey said, unwrapping a stick of gum.

“What?” I asked, startled.

“Randy says he’s the worst teacher he’s ever had.”

“Randy’s just pissed because Mr. Tremont kicked him out of class.” My voice was much louder than I meant it to be. I looked away, embarrassed.

“Whatever,” Lacey said, sounding bored. “Anyway, are you coming to my party tonight?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Maybe? It’s like, the biggest party of the year!”

“No it’s not,” I said. “What about the post-homecoming party? Or the Halloween party? Or the luau in February? Or —”

“Okay, okay.” She quickly checked the car beside mine for dirt before leaning her butt against it. “The point is, it will be big.”

“Well, ask Nikki,” I said. “I just had this whole big conversation about it with her.”

“Fine,” she said. We eyed each other warily. There was so much between us, so many years of friendship, and yet we had nothing to say to each other. What could I say, now that I knew how much she wasn’t telling me? Finally, I opened the door of my car and slid into the driver’s seat. “Well . . .”

She grabbed the top of my door before I closed it, her perfectly manicured nails peeking over the edge. “Hey Paige?” Her voice was low, tinged with a warmth I’d nearly forgotten.

“Yeah?” My heart got fluttery in a moment-of-truth kind of way. My script from earlier waited on my lips.
I’m sorry, too. I know things have been hard —

Lacey cocked her head to the side. “You’re not going to wear that tonight, are you?”

I don’t know how long I sat in my car after that, but when I looked up again the student lot was mostly empty. My head was full of stuffing. I had a ton of homework and my parents were starting to harass me about my Northwestern application essay; I’d have to get something done if I was going out tonight. I needed to focus, and gas-station coffee wasn’t going to cut it — I needed the hard stuff. Just making a decision helped; my brain felt sharper already. I turned my car toward Starbucks, the only café in town.

Inside, people were scattered at the tables in ones and twos, cups and napkins filling the space between them. I headed toward the counter and then stopped. Ethan was behind the cash register, making change for another customer. I considered backing away, ducking out of the café, but he looked up from his work and locked eyes with me. “Hey, Paige.”

“Hey,” I said, feeling awkward.

“What’re you drinking today?”

I ordered my usual, which I’d inherited from my mother. “Grande skinny caramel latte, extra hot, please.” I expected him to smirk at the fussiness of my order, but he just punched it into the computer and asked, “Anything else?”

“No thanks,” I said, swiping my credit card through the machine. “I, uh, didn’t know you worked here.”

He grinned. “Now you do,” he said, “and knowing’s half the battle.”

I looked at him blankly.

“No? G.I. Joe? Eighties nostalgia?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Kids these days.” He shook his head. “Are you here to write? Shanti’s here.” At her name, a dark head in the corner popped up and turned toward us. “Hi, Paige!” she called. She waved, and I instinctively glanced around to make sure no one I knew was in the café before I waved back.

Ethan picked up a marker and scrawled on a cup. “So how’s it going?”

“It’s . . . whatever.”

“Ah,” he said. “I see you’re taking Mr. Tremont’s lesson about specific details to heart.”

“Shut up,” I said. He grinned, then ducked behind the espresso machine.

I leaned against the counter, feeling awkward. “So,” I said, “um, how long have you worked here?”

He spoke over the clanking and hissing of the machine. “Just a few weeks, but I worked at a Starbucks in Omaha, so when we moved here . . . It’s just like riding a bike, you know.”

“Do you enjoy working here?”

Ethan’s head popped up over the machine. “Oh, I get it. We never finished our interview in class. So it’s my turn, right?”

“Uh, right,” I said, only then realizing that we’d never gotten around to talking about him.

“Do I enjoy working here?” Ethan asked. “I mean, it’s a job. It has its moments.”

“I’ve never had a real job.” The moment I said it, I knew it was a mistake.

“Must be nice.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I should get one.”

He fitted a plastic lid over my drink. “Well, Freud said that you need a balance of both love and work in your life.
Lieben und arbeiten.
”

“Interesting,” I said. “So . . . do you have to have a special work permit to work here?”

He looked amused. “Are you thinking of applying?”

“No,” I said. “No, I was just wondering . . . don’t you have to be sixteen to get a job?”

Ethan squinted at me. “Technically, I think you can get a work permit at fourteen. But yeah, you have to be at least sixteen to work here.” He tilted his head the way my mother does when she’s trying to understand me. “Why? How old are you, seventeen?”

“How old are
you
?” I asked.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m eighteen. This is an odd conversation we’re having.”

“You’re
eighteen
?”

“Yessss? Is that a problem?”

“But you’re —” I felt my face get hot and looked down to hide it. “Are you a senior?”

“Ohhhhhhh,” he said. “I get it. You thought I was a freshman.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.” He laughed. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Paige.”

“I don’t,” I insisted. He laughed again, and I realized how ridiculous I sounded. I smiled tentatively.

And then the door opened, and I stepped back automatically, looking away. Mrs. Austin strode in, covering the distance from the door to the counter in a breath, and by the time I looked back for Ethan, he was hidden behind the espresso machine.

“Well hello there, dear,” Mrs. Austin said, and then to Ethan: “My usual.” He paused for a millisecond and she snapped, “Triple espresso with a shot of nonfat soy.”

“Of course.” He passed my cup across the counter. I couldn’t look at him.

“What does your mother drink, Paige?” Mrs. Austin asked. “I can never remember.” My mother had been working for Mrs. Austin for six years. They’d sat through countless client meetings together, nearly always anchored with Starbucks cups.

“She —”

“Oh well, just make two of the same,” Mrs. Austin said, then looked at me. “What are you doing this afternoon, dear? Waiting for Jake to get off practice?”

“They have a game —” I started.

Mrs. Austin pushed her credit card across the counter, and Ethan had to turn the card machine around in order to slide it himself. Mrs. Austin didn’t seem to notice. “Ah, young love. What I wouldn’t do to be back in your place, Paige. These are the best years of your life, you know. Enjoy them while they last.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you here studying?” she asked. “It’s a good thing that Jake’s naturally gifted, because between football and working at the law firm, I don’t know when he’d find time to study if he needed to. You’re lucky to have long afternoons stretched out in front of you, dear. Plenty of time to focus on your schoolwork.”

My fingers wrapped around the cup more tightly. “Yeah, thanks.”

“So you’re here alone?” Mrs. Austin asked, looking around the café. “I don’t see Lacey or Nikki anywhere.”

I opened my mouth. “I’m —”

Wordlessly, Ethan passed her cups across the counter to her and she grabbed them, winking at me. “Well, a woman’s work is never done. But you know that. Enjoy your luxurious solitary afternoon, my dear.”

Without looking at Ethan, I hiked my bag up on my shoulder. “I should go,” I mumbled, and followed the trail of Mrs. Austin’s perfume all the way to the door.

My mother scolded me into a dress for the party that night, a little black thing with white accents that I’d picked up on Michigan Avenue with her before school started. I tried to point out the obvious fact that before the party, I’d have to spend several hours freezing outside on the bleachers, but she was insistent. We had a week before the vote for court, and people would be paying attention. She pushed me into a chair and swept my hair into an elaborate updo. In the end, even I had to admit that the effect was good. I smiled at myself, tilting my head down slightly so my face was half in shadow.

“Oh Paige, you look so pretty!” She leaned down next to me and looked at us in the mirror. Our faces were the same shape, pale ovals repeating themselves. Her eyes were a bright false blue, while mine were the scorched yellow-green of grass in August. During our shopping weekend in Chicago, her college friends kept telling me how much I looked like my mother when she was my age. One of them even called me Jacque, accidentally, and when she did my mother looked at me like I was someone she should know but couldn’t quite pinpoint.

I caught her eyes in the mirror and smiled, wondering if she saw herself when she looked at me. She smiled back. “Why can’t your sister be more like you, Paige? She could easily be as pretty as you are, if she put forth any effort whatsoever. She has better cheekbones.”

My smile faded. “I’ll let her know.”

Her reflection stared at me. “Just a moment.” She turned and clicked down the hallway toward her room. When I was certain she was gone, I leaned toward the mirror until my nose was nearly pressed up against it, staring at the minor imperfections and unevenness of my skin up close. I pulled back again, slowly, until the moment my skin looked perfect again. I squinted, trying to memorize the distance, and made a mental note not to let anyone get closer to me than that. At least, not in the light.

My mother reappeared behind me and draped a necklace over my collarbone, a glittery, elegant piece she’d had as long as I could remember. “Oh yes,” she said to herself, “isn’t that perfect.”

I reached up to touch it with nervous fingers. “Are you sure?”

“Of course, dear,” my mother said, fumbling with the clasp at the nape of my neck. “After all, you’re a going to be a princess; we can’t have you looking like a grungy teenager in public.” The clasp caught and my mother pulled back, scrutinizing me in the mirror with the eye of an artist. I watched her watch me, careful not to make eye contact but noticing the tiny wrinkles around her eyes, the long vertical line running down her forehead and ending just between her eyebrows, the puffiness beneath her lower lashes. She worked out with a personal trainer five days a week, spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on face creams and products that promised dewy youth in a bottle, watched what she ate, religiously stayed under an umbrella in the sun, and yet she couldn’t run forever. For a second I saw the strain of trying to stay young etched in her face.

She reached up to smooth an invisible stray hair on my head. “Maybe tonight will be the night.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, digging in a drawer for some lip gloss.

“Oh, you know,” she said. “Perhaps tonight will be the night that Jake pops the question.”

I looked up in horror. “What? The
question
?”

“You look so pretty tonight,” she said dreamily.

“Mother, are you insane? I’m not even eighteen yet! We’re in high school!” Did she think I was some character in a Salinger novel, a pretty girl in a camel coat to be admired and then wed?

Her gaze was distant. “I had just turned seventeen when Bobby Monroe proposed to me. It was the most romantic night of my life.”

“That was a different time, Mom. Like, a whole different
world.
People don’t get married after high school anymore.”