Lucky (7 page)

“S
O, YEAH, WE MADE OUT
,” I heard myself announcing. Behind us the grandfather clock chimed twice. I wasn’t tired at all, though I did wish we could go back upstairs to Kirstyn’s room and go to bed. I already regretted breaking my vow of secrecy.

But how do you not tell your best friends you kissed your ex? Especially when you are so busy not telling them everything else, something has to be let out.

“I knew it,” Kirstyn said, shaking her head. “Didn’t I tell you she liked Luke?”

“You did,” Gabrielle whispered.

“I don’t,” I insisted, thinking,
Wait, do I? No, no I don’t. I can’t. We’re friends, just friends. Friends who kissed two days ago. That’s all. I don’t want more, I don’t need more.
The last thing I needed was complications. “I totally don’t.”

“Oh.” Gabrielle made a face at Kirstyn, who laughed behind her hand.

“I was horny,” I said, choosing Gabrielle’s favorite word.

“You?” Gabrielle asked.

“You’re not the only one who gets horny.” I shrugged, trying to act as casual about it as I was trying to feel. “No big deal. So what, we made out. It wasn’t the first time.”

Maybe it won’t be the last. No. Don’t think about that.

“So you were just using him?” Kirstyn asked.

I wasn’t sure what to answer, what she wanted me to say. I gathered the blanket around me tighter. “I guess,” I said.

“Why not?” Gabrielle asked.

The flashlight in the middle of our tight huddle, pointed up at the coffered ceiling of the formal living room of Kirstyn’s house, dimmed a little. It was Kirstyn’s way of getting back at her parents: After they are snoring between their thousand-thread-count sheets, Kirstyn goes into the off-limits rooms of her house. She’s been doing it all year. She doesn’t eat or smoke or do drugs or have sex or anything while she’s in there, and she doesn’t sit on the couches or chairs because her butt would indent the down-filled cushions and she might get caught. She just goes in and sits there, on the floor, where she isn’t allowed to be. And when we sleep over, we sit there with her. When the sky begins to brighten we have to back out of the rooms, rubbing away traces of our footprints from the silk rugs. But while we’re in there, we lean toward one another and
whisper secrets, or away from one another to think. It feels naughty, weird, and boring, all at the same time.

So that’s what we were doing, leaning back, and my butt was starting to itch. I was wishing I could sit on the couch a few inches away that looked so soft and inviting.

“You were that horny?” Kirstyn asked.

I shrugged. It seemed like the simplest way to explain. I mean, I wasn’t going out with Luke. He hadn’t asked me out or anything—afterward, or since then. He’d had plenty of chances during the day in school.

“You know,” I said, “It’s not like it has to be true love or something. I mean, please. Right?”

“Absolutely,” Gabrielle said, taking a big gulp from her water bottle. “We’re way too young for love. We gotta just mess around awhile.”

I nodded. “As you always say, Kirstyn, when we’re in high school we’ll do whatever we want with whichever guys we want. But right now these are the guys available and sometimes, you know, you kiss what you got!”

“Well, can’t argue with that!” Kirstyn whispered, and we rocked back and forth, trying to hold in our laughs. When we had ourselves under control, Kirstyn said, “It’s kind of perfect, really, because he’s obviously willing, and it’s not like you have somebody from camp to fall back on…” She gestured toward Gabrielle, whose camp boyfriend is sixteen. “So, why not use him?”

“Yeah,” I said, although that was not really it. “I mean,
it’s not like…I mean, we’re friends.”

“Whatever,” Gabrielle said. “They’re buddies. They both get horny so who cares. You use each other, nobody gets hurt. It doesn’t have to be anything romantic.”

“Right,” I agreed. She was just agreeing with what I said. So why was my stomach a fist?

“Absolutely,” Kirstyn said.

At least she wasn’t angry at me like I thought she might be, after I swore up and down I didn’t like Luke and then went ahead and made out with him.

“I mean, you don’t want to be a slut or anything,” Kirstyn added. “But…”

The flashlight died. We all sat there for another minute until Kirstyn whispered, “Let’s go up to my room.” We backed out, with Kirstyn going last so she could smudge over our footprints. Kirstyn’s house has like thirty rooms but she’s only ever supposed to go in three: her room, the kitchen, and the media room. We tiptoed up the stairs behind her.

Kirstyn turned on her TV and we all sat on her bed for a while, watching, getting dozy. After a while, Kirstyn hit mute. “Did I tell you Justin and I were texting like all night last night?”

“No,” Gabrielle and I both said.

“I told him I was busy tonight, though,” she said. “Hard to get, you know.”

We both nodded.

“Oh, so anyway, I was talking about the party with my mom and we think, I mean, I’m really glad we’re doing it.”

I smiled at her. She looked kind of sad. I hadn’t realized it but maybe she was feeling left out, that I had made out with Luke. I didn’t want her to feel like Gabrielle and I were all coupled up suddenly and she wasn’t. “Yeah, me, too,” I whispered. “We’re so lucky, the five of us…”

Kirstyn looked at me like I had lost my mind. “I meant because of how we’re growing apart.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The five of us,” she said, and looked to Gabrielle for confirmation. “Zhara and Ann are great, you know I love them to death, but Zhara is just so serious and wonky, like, have a little fun, you know? And Ann, I mean, she is just more awkward by the day. And could somebody tell her to count a calorie? I don’t want to be mean, but she is seriously spreading out. Right?”

Gabrielle shrugged. “They’re just a little boring. Not their fault, but…”

“You think Zhara is really no fun?” I asked. “She’s just…she’s like the kind of funny you have to be standing right next to her to get, I think.”

Gabrielle nodded. “You may be right. Maybe I need to stand right next to her more.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t you think? And Ann, I mean, I know she’s kind of going through a stage of overly deep and down, but…”

“Ugh,” Kirstyn said. “She’s such a wet blanket.”

“But…”

“Please!” She rolled her eyes. “I swear, you’re getting almost as drippy as Ann lately. Lighten up, would you?” She smiled, but it was not a happy smile, and gave me what I think was supposed to be a playful kick. It hit me kind of off-balance though, and I fell off her bed.

It was one of those make-a-choice moments I sometimes have with Kirstyn, I could feel it—if I didn’t want her to think I was a wonky, serious loser myself, I needed to come up with a jokey, light comment:
Kick me out of your bed, why don’t you?
But as those words passed through my head and almost fell out of my mouth, they got stuck. Was she kicking me out? Why?
Lighten up,
I yelled silently at myself, but I couldn’t lighten. I smacked a smile onto my mouth but couldn’t manage a jokey comeback; I didn’t trust my voice to be steady.

What was wrong with me?

I just sat there smiling psychotically at them. They were starting to look a little worried. I tried to pull the smile down a notch but it was stuck. Kirstyn and Gabrielle glanced at each other warily.

“Yeah,” I finally forced myself to say. “I guess you’re right. About them. About Zhara and Ann.” I was seriously about one second from bursting into tears. I felt like such a low-life nasty traitor. The first rule is self-defense; I know I heard that somewhere, and I tried to convince myself
that’s all I was doing. Still, my teeth felt like they were rotting right in my head. “They are kind of…both…”

Kirstyn nodded and turned to me, her big blue eyes soft and gentle, like I was her stupid but beloved underprivileged cousin. “So I think it’s pretty obvious to everybody that this party is really like a good-bye to our tight friendship, which is why I think it is so important to all of us, really. Don’t you think so, Phoebe?”

I shrugged. I had thought everything was fine, that we were all still best friends, that we loved one another. When did all this happen, and did everybody know it except me? I tried to swallow.

We all just sat there for another few minutes, saying nothing, until Kirstyn said, “Anyway, it’ll be an awesome party. I’m really looking forward to it. Aren’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Gabrielle said. “Did you hear the soccer boys at lunch? Talking about getting a limo for it?”

“Yeah,” I managed. “They sounded pretty into it.”

“Oh, totally. Party of the year. Well, I gotta get some sleep,” Gabrielle said. “I have a tennis match in the morning.” She scooted down onto the air mattress. I turned to shrug at Kirstyn, because we always stay up until dawn at sleepovers.

“Yeah, let’s go to sleep,” Kirstyn said. She shut off the TV and snuggled down under her covers. I took the hint and got into my air-mattress-bed between them.

“You guys?” I whispered.

“Shh,”
Kirstyn whispered back, and turned over.

When the sunrise finally came, I was the only one still awake. Usually at that point we are all in the kitchen eating Oreos and giggling.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt lonelier.

I
WALKED INTO THE ARCTIC BLAST
of my house from the thick humidity outside and dropped my duffel. “Phoebe?” Mom called. I ventured into the kitchen. She usually works on Saturdays. Oh, yeah. It all came rushing back.

“Mom?”

She closed the refrigerator, a bottle of water in her hand. She was in sweaty running clothes. I watched her chug the water in quick gulps, and then yank the sweatband back off her hair.

“Hi,” I said.

“Dress shopping,” she answered.

“Huh?”

“For your party. Give me fifteen minutes and we’ll go find something spectacular.” She leaned toward me and I froze. Was there a Rice Krispie on my cheek from breakfast at Kirstyn’s? But no, she was kissing the air near my face, weirdly. Before I could manage to pronounce okay, she was
out of the kitchen, taking the stairs by twos up to her room.

I waited in the kitchen, looking out the bay window over the sink, past the pool and the tennis court in the backyard, to where some birds were flying low across the lawn. I think a teacher once said you can tell it’s going to rain if the birds are flying low. Or maybe I dreamed that. It occurred to me that I could probably learn a lot if I ever listened in school. The sky was bright blue, so I must have dreamed it, I decided.

When Mom came down in jeans and a white T-shirt, her hair combed damp and her face as beautiful and sharp as always, I was guzzling a glass of orange juice. “You know that’s pure sugar,” she said.

“No wonder I like it,” I said, putting it in the sink.

She laughed, bigger than normal, then sighed. “Ready?” I followed her out to the garage and got in the passenger seat of her Porsche. We drove without talking. She drives really fast but it still felt safe. The seat kind of hugged me, which was nice. I was kind of disappointed we got to the Neiman Marcus parking lot so fast.

As we walked through the store together, toward the juniors department, I watched people’s heads turn. Everybody looks at her and she doesn’t even notice. “Have fun last night?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Sure.”
What if she asks me how things are going with my friends?
I thought.
Because, I mean, of course things are fine, just, I’ve been a little weird lately, no big deal.
Or maybe somehow she’d figured out about Luke, that I’d kissed him again, or that I kind of liked him, or was using him, or even worse, was not. “Why do you want to know?” I asked her.

She looked at me funny. “Why do you sound like Allison all of a sudden?”

I laughed. “Ew. I don’t know.”

She laughed, too. Phew. We went the rest of the way without talking. At the juniors department, salesladies flocked around Mom, as they always do. They can just tell. I went one time with Ann and her mom and we couldn’t get anybody to help us at all.

Mom explained that we needed a fabulous dress for my graduation party, so immediately all three salesladies, knowing the drill, fell all over one another to compliment my figure, my face, my eyes, my hair. I shrugged at Mom, who shrugged back. We knew the drill, too.

They showed us so many dresses my head was spinning, but Mom quickly said yes or no to each and then we went to the dressing room. “Socks, too,” she reminded me. I peeled them off, remembering I had worn them yesterday and slept in them last night and they smelled a little bit like it. I shoved them under my jeans and pulled on the first dress.

“No,” Mom said, and I whipped it off. I don’t even think I looked at it.

About five or six dresses in, I saw the green one I had clipped a picture of from
Teen Vogue
. I pulled it carefully
over my head and closed my eyes. She didn’t say anything so I opened them. Her hands were over her mouth as she looked at me in the mirror.

“What?” I looked at myself, then looked away. I didn’t want to look too closely, because I had imagined myself in this dress so many times it was kind of weird. Dancing with my friends, dancing with Luke, slow dancing with Luke, last dance of the party, with Luke’s arms pulling me close to him…always, always, in this emerald green dress with the straps spread far apart on my shoulders. I waited for her no.

It didn’t come.

I looked up again. She was blinking, staring at me in the mirror, her hands still over her mouth. Okay, look.

I slid my eyes over to my reflection, and there I stood, shoulders hunched but otherwise just as I had dared to imagine I might look in this beautiful dress, when I imagined it, alone and in my pajamas. Beautiful. I mean the dress, of course; it was as beautiful as it had looked in the magazine.

“You’re beautiful, baby,” my mother said.

I opened my mouth to joke, to disagree, to argue. But then I didn’t, because the thing is, for the first time ever, I was. She was right. I looked beautiful.

I uncrossed my arms and let myself look at it, this beautiful girl in the mirror, in this deep green dress that fit her like it was designed for her, sculpted onto her, the same exact color of her eyes, matching and highlighting the slight curves of her body, straight as it was. She looked beautiful. And she
was me. I met Mom’s eyes and there were tears in them.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s your dress.”

I nodded, touching the soft silk near my hips.

She closed her eyes and breathed deep. Her hand went again to her mouth as she swallowed. “Okay,” she said softly. “Let’s go. It doesn’t need a single stitch.”

I took it off and she hung it on the hanger while I put my regular clothes back on. When I had tied my shoes, I followed her and the dress, high on the hanger in front of her, to the checkout counter.

The woman smiled at us. “We just got that one in. Stunning, isn’t it?”

“Stunning,” my mother agreed, taking out her charge card and handing it over.

“You could be sisters,” the lady said, moving smoothly and fluidly, whipping the card through the machine, shimmying a garment bag down over the dress. “You’re too young to have such a magnificent daughter.”

“She’s my baby,” Mom said. She snapped and unsnapped the silver closure on her wallet.

“No,” the lady said, frowning at the machine. “You have more?”

“Three girls,” Mom said.

“Lucky you,” the lady said. “Sorry. I have to run your card again. This machine is so cranky.”

“No problem,” Mom said. Her hand tightened on her wallet.

“All as beautiful as this one?” the lady asked, still frowning.

Mom nodded. “Beautiful girls.”

“Like their mama,” the lady said, frowning even deeper. “I really apologize. Do you have another card? This temperamental machine…”

“Of course,” Mom said, handing over another, then checking her watch.

“I really do apologize,” the lady said. “This shouldn’t take another second.” She turned to me and smiled. Her teeth were yellow, I noticed. “Your prom?”

“Graduation,” I said. “Eighth grade graduation.”

“Oh, very sophisticated taste.” She lifted her black framed glasses on their chain and peered down through them. “This is quite a dress for such a young girl.”

“It was made for her,” Mom said.

“You’re very lucky,” the lady said, flashing me a kind of evil look. “Aren’t you?”

I shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess.”

“Would you mind hurrying please?” Mom asked. “We’re in a bit of a rush.”

“Yes, of course, only this card was rejected, too.”

I was starting to sweat. “Never mind,” I said to Mom.

Mom threw another card onto the counter. “Put it on this one.” Her eyes were fire. The lady behind the counter stopped smiling and focused on typing in the numbers.

Her foot tapping, Mom rifled through her bag, then
checked her watch.

“This one is declined as well,” the lady said, handing it cautiously across the counter.

Shaking her head, Mom tossed it into her bag and thrust another at the lady. “Here’s my Neiman’s card.”

The lady smiled without showing her yellow teeth. I turned my back to her and leaned against the counter, waiting, listening to my mother’s nails drumming impatiently. I glanced around quickly to make sure nobody from school was around.

“I’m sorry,” the lady said.

Mom exhaled hard, holding her hand out for it.

“I apologize, the computer says they—I have to cut it.”

“What are you talking about?” Mom demanded. The lady swiveled her screen around. Mom looked at it; I didn’t. I was sinking down onto the floor. I heard scissors snipping plastic above my head. “That is the most ridiculous…give me your name.” Mom was speaking quietly, clipped, in her most severe voice.

The lady spelled out her name and Mom entered it into her BlackBerry. The lady was apologizing, saying she was only doing her job, as Mom told her she was used to a different level of service.

“Let’s just skip it,” I said.

“I’ll pay cash,” Mom said, taking out her wallet. “How much is it?”

“Four forty, plus tax,” the lady mumbled. “So that’s…”

“I’ll have to…” Mom stopped. I looked up. She was just standing there, holding her wallet and staring into space.

“Mom?”

She looked up at the ceiling, blinking.

“I don’t even like that dress,” I lied, standing up.

Mom shook her head. “We’ll be back later, after I speak with your manager.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the lady said. “Of course.” She looked up at me pityingly. I could’ve punched her.

Mom and I walked back out the way we had come. Her eyes were like lasers, straight ahead. I kept up the pace beside her. It wasn’t easy; she was fast. I wished I could put my arm around her, tell her it was okay, tell her it didn’t matter, but what could I do? I just tried to keep up.

Not saying the wrong thing is easier if you say nothing.

Near the door, I heard my name. Kirstyn and her mother were heading toward us, big smiles beaming. My mother grimaced, said the S-word quietly, the exact same word I was holding in. We both straightened up and smiled.

“Hey,” I said to Kirstyn.

“Hi!” she said.

“Hi, girls!” her mother said. “Looking for dresses, I guess? Us, too.” She patted her huge shiny pocketbook. “Kirstyn has a whole file of ideas clipped. This is so exciting, isn’t it? Our babies are really growing up!”

Mom nodded at her.

“So did you find anything?”

Mom and I each shrugged a tiny bit. “Still thinking,” I said.

“This place has really gone downhill,” Mom said quietly.

“Oh,” Kirstyn’s mom frowned. “Maybe we should go someplace else.”

Mom raised her eyebrows noncommittally and took a step toward the door. “Well…”

“Well, true, Kirstyn is shorter and, a bit, well, curvy in the behind, so they’d be looking at different things.” She put her arm around Kirstyn and squeezed. “But I’d think Phoebe would be the easiest person to fit, no?”

“Fit is not the issue,” Mom said tightly. “Everything looks stunning on her. It’s just hard to decide and this place is so pretentious and airless it suffocates me. Let’s go, Phoebe.” She stalked out. I hurried after her.

She unlocked her car from fifty feet away with the keychain thing, and slammed herself in. As I went around, got in, and buckled up, she sat stock still, staring ahead.

After a few minutes, I said, “Mom?”

She blinked twice. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?” I waved my hand in front of my face, like,
forget it
.

She shook her head. “We’ll come back.”

“I don’t even—”

“Stop.” She turned to me fiercely. “Yes you do, and you
should have it. This was…it isn’t…there was just some confusion. My credit cards are all paid automatically online, so when the…”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said. I just wanted her to stop. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to just melt into the soft leather seat of her car and disappear.

“I can certainly afford to buy my daughter a dress for her…” She didn’t finish. She turned and stared out the front window again. We just sat there for a few minutes and I was not saying one word. Her fingers were tight on the wheel, strangling it. I wished I could reach over and make them relax. I stayed as still as I could, tucking my own fingers under my thighs.

She took a quick sharp breath in through her nose and flicked the key in the ignition. We backed out of the spot and sped home, the long way, on the highway, very fast. When we got there, I unbuckled and got out but she didn’t.

“You coming in?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I’ll be back later.” She looked up at me.

I turned away. Her eyes looked too complex. I couldn’t meet them.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s all good.”

She shifted her eyes down and away.

“I mean…”

But by then she was peeling out, backward, down the driveway.