Want to Go Private?

SARAH DARER LITTMAN

TO THE DEDICATED MEN AND
WOMEN OF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT
COMMUNITY WHO FACE UGLINESS
EVERYDAY IN THE EFFORT TO
KEEP OUR KIDS SAFE

CHAPTER 1
AUGUST 31

“How can you
not
be excited?”

Faith, my best friend since second grade, is lying on the edge of the swimming pool watching the ripples as she trails her slim fingers through the water. “I mean, come on, Abby. We’re starting
high school
tomorrow. It’ll be so much better than middle school.”

“And you know this how?” I wonder aloud.

Faith rolls her eyes.

“Well, for one thing, there are all the new kids from Eastern coming in. It won’t just be the same people we’ve been going to school with, like,
forever
.”

“Great. So there will be even
more
Clique Queens to make our lives miserable.”

Faith draws her palm through the water, fast, sending a shower of cold droplets over my head. She doesn’t get the satisfaction of hearing me shriek, because it actually feels pretty good after an afternoon of baking in the last day of summer sun.

“Why do you have to be so negative?”

“I’m not being negative,” I protest, wiping the water from my face. “I’m just … ambivalent.”

Liar
, I think to myself.
What you really are is scared
.

“Ooh,
ambivalent
! You practicing PSAT words already?”

“No. It’s just that … I guess part of me
is
looking forward to it. But a bigger part of me is just … well, scared. About how big Roosevelt is. About getting lost. About how everything is going to be different.”

“Different doesn’t always mean bad, Abs. Different could also be new and exciting, right?”

That’s Faith for you. Miss Always Looking on the Bright Side of Life.

“I guess.”

“Well,
I’m
excited. I can’t wait. I’ve already picked out my outfit — I’m going to wear my new denim skirt with that cute Green Girl T-shirt. How do you think I should wear my hair? Up or down?”

“Um … I don’t know. Down, I guess.”

“You could at least
act
as if you cared.”

“I
do
care — it’s just I haven’t even
thought
about what I’m going to wear tomorrow.”

“Why not? You’re so much prettier than me and you don’t do anything about it. Watch, you’ll show up to school tomorrow in jeans and some random T-shirt that’s too big for you, instead of a cute outfit that shows off your curves.” Faith sighs, looking down at her chest, which is on the small side. “At least you
have
curves to show off.”

“Oh, stop,” I tell her, feeling myself blush. I’ve always considered my boobs more of a curse than a blessing. “You’re starting to sound like Mom and Lily. If I have to listen to one more tag-team lecture from them about how all I need is a fricking makeover, I might just end up murdering someone.”

“Well, you can’t murder me because I’m your best friend and without me, who would you sit with at lunch?” Faith jokes, wiping her face with her wet hand to cool off. “But seriously, Abby, for once, your mom and Lily are right. You could do with a pre-high school makeover. How about we go upstairs and I try some stuff with your hair?”

“How about we just chill in the basement and watch
The Lord of the Rings
again instead? I need an Aragorn fix.”

Faith sighs.

“C’mon, Abby,
please
! This is the
first day of high school
we’re talking about. We can watch
Lord of the Rings
anytime. Besides, Legolas is
way
cuter than Aragorn, and you know it.”

I don’t see the point, but Faith is giving me a pleading puppy dog look with her big, brown eyes and I always have a hard time saying no when she does that.

“Okay. You win. But no putting tons of crap on my face. And afterward I get to see Viggo Mortensen.”

Faith smiles, magnanimous in victory. “Only a little crap. Just enough crap to highlight your best features. And afterward I’ll
definitely
watch Orlando Bloom.”

After what feels like hours but I think is only forty-five minutes, Faith is working what must be the umpteenth hairstyle.

“Come on, Faith. I’m starting to get a headache from all the hair pulling. It’s one that only your mom’s homemade oatmeal raisin cookies will cure.”

“Just a few more minutes,” Faith says, twisting two pieces of hair on either side of my head and then pinning them at the back with a large wooden clip. “This one’s good. It gets the hair off your face so people can actually see your eyes.”

“And that’s a good thing? I
like
it when teachers can’t tell if I’m awake or asleep in the morning.”

“You’re determined to be a pain about this, aren’t you?” Faith says. Her narrowed eyes glare at my reflection in the mirror.

“No. I just … don’t see the point. It’s not like it’s going to make a difference.”

“Just wait till I’m finished,” Faith argues. “Now look up while I put on this eyeliner.”

I tilt my head back slightly and look up at the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling of Faith’s room. They barely look like anything in the daylight, but I still remember the first time I had a sleepover with Faith in second grade. Mrs. Wilson turned off the lights and closed the bedroom door and it was like this magical constellation appeared overhead.

Faith’s mom is so cool and artsy; she’s like the anti-Mom. She writes articles for craft magazines and is always trying to get us to help her try out new projects, and she never seems to mind the mess we make while we’re doing them. I love the random way she dresses, like she doesn’t care what people think, and how she just twists her long, dark hair in a bun and sticks a pencil through it. I think I can count on my fingers and toes the number of times I’ve seen her wearing makeup. She’s kind of bemused by Faith’s interest in all the girly stuff.
My
mom is religious about getting her “Mom do” trimmed every six weeks and wouldn’t be caught dead even coming down for breakfast on weekends without a little mascara and blush. When I came home from that sleepover in second grade and asked if I could put stars on
my
bedroom ceiling, she told me they would ruin the paint.

I feel Faith’s breath on my face as she carefully draws the eye
pencil across my eyelid. I look down from the ceiling and Faith’s tongue is poking out of the corner of her mouth, like it always does when she’s concentrating hard. I feel this warm glow in my heart — some things never change.
Or do they
? a nagging voice in my head warns. I wish that voice would shut up. I’m nervous enough already.

“Ta da! Look,” Faith says. “And I dare you to tell me you don’t like what you see.”

I stare at my reflection in Faith’s mirror, which has pictures of the two of us stuck around the sides at haphazard angles along with ticket stubs from all the movies and concerts we’ve been to together. I look
different
. The eyeliner makes my hazel eyes appear bigger and more dramatic, and Faith’s put on a pale, almost colorless gloss to make my lips shine. I look older, more like someone who belongs in high school. With my hair up like this, there’s nowhere to hide. I feel exposed and, I don’t know, vulnerable.

“What’s the verdict?” Faith asks. “I think you look really pretty.”

“I … I just don’t know if it’s me.”

“Of course it’s you, silly!” Faith teases, smiling. “It’s just called ‘you making an effort for a change.’”

I turn to face Faith. “Making an Effort Abby” is giving me the creeps.

“Why is everyone so concerned about making me into something else? Why can’t you all just like me the way I am?”

Faith’s smile fades into a look of hurt confusion.

“I
do
like you the way you are, Abs. I’m just doing this because … you know, ’cause I care about you and I thought, well, you’d want to put your best face forward on our first day of
high school. You know, the whole first-impressions-count thing and all that. I’m sorry if you feel like I’m trying to make you into someone you’re not.”

I feel a wave of guilt for making her feel bad. Faith’s the best of best friends, the kind you can count on no matter what. No one understands me like Faith, none of my other friends, my parents, and definitely not my brat of a sister, Lily, who I can’t even believe shares the same DNA.

“I’m sorry, Faith. I guess I’m just … you know …”

“No, Abs, I don’t know. Tell me.”

I take a deep breath and face “Making an Effort Abby” in the mirror as I make my confession.

“I’m scared.”

I turn to look at Faith. “I’m scared about starting high school. I’m scared that things are going to change but I’m just as scared that they’re going to be the same. I’m just one big lump of not being able to sleep at night, sick to my stomach, wish the summer would last forever, scared.”

Faith’s brown eyes glisten, and she envelops me in a hug.

“Everyone’s scared of starting high school. If they tell you they’re not, they’re just full of it. But we were scared of starting middle school and we survived that, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, barely. If you call being ragged on by the Clique Queens every day surviving.”

Faith frowns.

“Okay, I’ll admit, Amanda Armitage and the other Witches of Western did put a kind of a damper on our middle school experience. But it wasn’t a
complete
suckfest — we still managed to have
some
fun.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Trust me, Abby. High school will be better. Just wear something nice tomorrow, and do your hair and your eyes like this. Start with a good first impression. Promise?”

Faith holds up her pinkie like she has ever since we met in second grade. I curl mine around hers and mutter, “Pinkie promise,” even though I’m pretty sure that it won’t make any difference, and I have no confidence that high school will be better.

“What happened to
you
?” Lily says when I get in the car.

“What do you mean?” I ask, reaching to undo Faith’s hair clip, so my hair will fall back into its customary place shielding my face.

“Don’t, darling, your hair looks very pretty up that way,” Mom says, appraising me critically. “Something else is different, too…. Wait, it’s eyeliner —
finally
, you did something to emphasize your eyes like I’ve been telling you. Will wonders never cease?”

I feel like an insect under a microscope. I want to wipe off the makeup, mess up my hair, and go back to being my normal self.

“It’s the wrong color,” Lily says. “Abby should have used gold or brown eyeliner with her eyes, not black. Black makes her look too emo.”

“Well, you can always lend her some, Lily.”

“No way! I’m not lending her my makeup. She doesn’t know how to put it on right. She’ll ruin it.”

“I don’t even
want
to borrow your stupid makeup, okay? Faith was just trying to get me to dress up for the first day of high school.”

“Faith’s right, Abby,” Mom says. “You only get one opportunity to make a first impression.”

I’m going to punch the next person who says that to me
.

“I’ve already
made
an impression on most of the people there. It’s only the new kids from Eastern. And I’ve met some of
them
before at church.”

“Well, I’m going to lend you
my
makeup,” Mom says in her
and that’s final
voice. “Because you look very nice, and it’s important to put your best foot forward on your first day of high school.”

“
What
!” Lily exclaims. “You never let
me
touch your makeup! And you have all the expensive stuff.”

“That, young lady, is because
you
somehow finagle me into buying you plenty of makeup of your own, which you just refused to share with your sister.”

“It’s still not fair.”

Lily sulks in the backseat the entire way home, which normally I would have considered a blessing, except that it means I have to be the one to talk to Mom, and all she wants to do is discuss in detail what I plan to wear tomorrow, like I have the slightest idea or even care.

Mom and Lily decide to make dressing me a joint project, and they invade my room, rummaging through my closet and drawers to pick out potential outfits. I get the impression Lily’s purposely trying to make me look like a
Seventeen
magazine reject because she’s putting together the most putrid
combinations of clothing I’ve ever seen. My mother finally gives her the “
Lily Ann
!” treatment, and orders her to leave the room.

Mom’s trying to convince me to wear this totally preppy outfit that I wouldn’t be seen dead in.

“You can’t be serious,” I tell her. “Face it, Mom, I’m not you.”

She’s starting to get pissed at me, I can tell. Lily would have caved by now. Scratch that. Lily would have come up with some cute little outfit before Mom even walked in the room, instead of being like some sad Bratz doll, who, even at age fourteen, still needs Mommy to dress her, like yours truly.

“Well, I don’t see you contributing much to this conversation, Abby, other than saying no to everything. Why don’t you pick something out and let
me
say no for a change?”

Great. Way to put myself on the spot. I stare at the clothes on the bed and the clothes in my closet, hoping for inspiration. All I want to do is grab a pair of cargo shorts and my Aragorn T-shirt, but I know that will send Mom into orbit. I will myself to be “Make an Effort Abby,” and take a denim skirt and a green spaghetti-strap tank with a white cotton shirt and lay them on the bed. Even though I don’t really like wearing skirts that much, I figure it’ll get Mom off my case and maybe tomorrow I can switch it for cargo shorts.