Playing Nice (13 page)

I peel the dress off and drop it on the ground. I almost cancelled on Sarah last night. I stared at my phone and wondered why a person would press send on a text when they know it's going to hurt someone else. But then I remembered how in fourth grade Sarah was the only person to stick up for me when I came to school after a skunk sprayed our house. She washed my hair with tomato juice until her hands were dyed red.
It's my color
, was all she said.

And I remembered how she turned down Kyle Travis for Winter Formal freshman year because I didn't have a date and she'd promised to go stag with me. Or how she let me cry on her lap after my grandma died, the way she stroked my hair until I fell asleep.

Can you forget the past even if the person sucks in the present?

Sarah puts on a short pink dress and steps back to look at herself in the mirror. Pouting her lips, she does her best model pose, knee popped out, elbows back.

"I love this. I look awesome," she says.

Every time Sarah says 'me' or 'I' these days, it's like an invisible pimple appears on her forehead. POP! And the morphing continues. "
I'm
totally getting this one. Look at
my
boobs! It's like this dress was made for
me
." Pop, pop, pop.

I turn away from the mirror and grab a hunter green dress off a hanger. The small space is getting tinier by the minute, and I wonder if there's enough oxygen in here for both me and her. I pull the dress over my head and look in the mirror. It hits mid-thigh, not too short, but not too long, and cinches right below my rib cage, making my waist look extra small. I twist my hips, swishing them through the air. Perfect. It even goes with Matt's jelly bracelet. Sort of.

Just thinking Matt's name sends my groin into a frenzy, like all my pent-up sex thoughts are rumbling around in my lady parts, dying to escape. I've never felt like this before and I don't know if it's right or wrong or if I'm going to hell, but I do know I can't wait to see him at the dance.

"Marty, are you even listening to me?" Sarah flicks my leg.

"What? Oh, I'm sorry." Programmed reaction. I'm not really sorry.

"What's with you lately? It's like you don't even listen to me anymore."

"I was actually thinking about Matt," I say, and smile at myself in the mirror.

"I'm your best friend, so I'm going to tell you this. It might sting, but it's for your own good. You're totally wasting your time. I mean, he's a senior and super gorge and
so
not into geeks like you," Sarah says matter-of-factly.

Wait? What?

"But you don't even know him." I touch the bracelet around my wrist.

"Like I need to. He's got the face of a Greek god. He probably has sex in weird positions with college girls. And I know you, like, better than anybody on this planet. He's way out of your league. You've never even kissed anybody."

Sarah's covered in so many pimples now that I can barely see her face. Shouldn't she support me? Be a shoulder to cry on? Instead, all I get is that I'm a geek and Matt has sex with college girls. I want to squeeze her head until it explodes in a mess of puss.

"By the way, that dress is, like, made for you. You look
so
pretty. You have to get it." Sarah smiles at the two of us in the mirror and wraps her arm around me. Her in her pink dress and me in green. It's the picture we'll take the night of the dance. The one that will replace the Spring Fling photo on my desk.

I force a smile and beat back all the words Sarah just said about Matt. All the words she said about Lil. My phone buzzes in my purse and I break our pose, peeling Sarah's arm off my skin.

Lil:
Wanna come over 2nite?

I breathe in, stealing my air back. Just seeing Lil's name makes me feel better. She put on an extra layer of black eyeliner and walked down the halls today like a statue that wouldn't break. A sophomore football player with bad teeth whispered
whore
as she went by. Lil pretended to go at him and he flinched, almost falling into a locker.

"Fuckwad," Lil said and smiled.

She looked so calm and collected, but I know that even statues weather. Eventually, they succumb to the beating of time, no matter how badly the artist wants them to stay intact.

"So, you want to watch a movie tonight?" Sarah asks.

I look at my phone, then up at Sarah in the mirror. Her hands are on her hips and she's smiling, trying to coat everything over with a nice candy shell. It doesn't work. Her words are floating in the air around us, and I don't want to stand under them anymore.

"I'm pretty tired. I think I'm just going to hang at home."

Sarah shakes her head, her red hair bouncing with the movement. "Whatever, loser."

She pulls the pink dress over her head and I quickly type back to Lil.

Marty:
Sure.

We buy the dresses and drive home in silence.

***

The lights are on inside of Addison Farm, and I wonder what it feels like to be Lil and her mom, banished to the trailer with a warm home and family only feet away. Maybe it's freeing, like they don't have to worry about what everyone thinks and Lil and her mom can eat dinner in bed while watching a movie. Lately, every time I have to sit around the table with my parents, I feel shackled to the chair, forced to place my napkin in my lap and ask to be excused, like a prisoner. But then I feel bad for not being thankful for having a healthy meal and two parents and a house with all upgraded appliances.

"About time you showed up," Lil says, sticking her head out the door. She has her hair pulled into two buns, which sprout from the top of her head like antennae. "You almost missed her."

"Who?" I say.

"My mom. She wants to apologize to you."

Lil's mom is standing in front of their tiny mirror putting on red lipstick. She's wearing a waitress outfit, the old-fashioned kind with an apron and orthopedic shoes. Definitely not a stripper. The night I met her feels like yesterday and forever ago in the same breath, and I think she's as pretty as I remember.

"Marty," she says, turning to greet me. Her voice is smooth and warm, like velvet, and seems to cover the entire trailer. "I want to apologize. I was rude and you didn't deserve it." She rubs her thumb over Lil's cheek, and Lil lets her. "You saved my daughter."

It's a mirror image, the present and future Lil. I can see it. In this moment, standing in their home, a small space filled with a beat-up mustard couch, its stuffing coming out of the cushions, and two single beds, one with a flowery comforter, the other with tie-dye. A broken mirror on a wall with water damage and the stale smell of cigarettes in the air. My head clears of all the cloudy confusion I've been holding onto for the past week, and all that's left is a bright blue summer sky.

"Thank you, but you don't need to apologize."

"Yes, I do. People don't do that enough in this town. I was wrong, and you need to know that." I nod; I can't think of what else to say. Because she's beautiful and honest and makes me want to wrap myself up in her voice like a baby. She's so Lil and at the same time, so not.

"Now, I have to get to work. I'll see you in the morning," she says to Lil. "I hope I see you more often, Marty."

After she's gone, I say, "Your mom's great." And I mean it. I like her and not just because Lil made me promise, but because she loves Lil. It's in her eyes, like her daughter is the one thing that makes living in a trailer okay.

"Enough of the serious shit. We need some music." Lil walks over to an old record player propped up on an end table in the corner.

"Does that thing actually play? It's, like, a thousand years old." The record player looks like the one my grandma had with her in the nursing home, a wooden box that flips open to reveal a turntable.

"Yes, Pollyanna. It plays better music than the modern stuff you use." Lil pulls a record from a crate of what seems like hundreds. So much music, so many words.

I stand in Lil's trailer, looking around at the walls and beds and blankets. Nothing is new. Even the mirror has a crack down the center. Yet, it seems to sing with life. The bare beige walls hold stories locked somewhere in the insulation. The couch hums with bodies that have spent time wondering why this trailer is their home. Even the air speaks to me.

My house never does this. Its hard granite counters don't remind me of my grandma and her swollen knuckles and the perfect blueberry cobbler she made every Sunday. Or the way she smelled like lilacs. I never smell lilac in my house anymore. All the walls that held my grandma's smell were torn down when my mom made everything open-concept.

"What band did you choose?" I ask, fidgeting with my hands.

"The Ramones."

I nod. I have no idea who they are. Other than my recent introduction to Bob Marley, my music stylings haven't changed much.

The record cracks when Lil sets the needle down on it. Nerves start to grumble in my stomach. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Dance? Sit down and listen? Pretend I know the words and sing along? I'm used to choreographed numbers with blocking and a chorus to cover me up if I make a wrong move. But here I'm exposed. What if I do everything wrong? What if all the steps I take lead down a path that leaves me alone? What if screaming and dancing and writing words down on paper that should be kept locked in a dark place makes the world hate me? I can't be hated. I need to be loved. If some days I have to pretend to like someone's terrible outfit or tell Sarah she deserves a boyfriend or look at my mom and quietly think her life of volunteering isn't about helping others, it's about helping herself, I guess that's okay.

I guess...

But then the song snaps on, like it's being born into the room, moving fast like an oncoming train of guitar chords. It's a frenzy, each note pumping into my veins, and all my confusion starts to melt. It's the same way I feel when I know something is going to come out of me that lives in the back part of my brain, the part hidden behind all my niceness.

I don't know if I want that coming out here, in Lil's house, for her to see. But I'm pretty sure it comes out because of Lil. Because she won't fall for my choreographed dances and costumes. Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and listen to the music. And I like it.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Lil didn't plant something inside of me. Maybe she pulled something out. Maybe it's been there all along, but I covered it in dresses and makeup and smile after endless smile.

But what's wrong with smiling and being nice? What's wrong with wanting to make people happy? I'm happy when others are.

Or maybe I'm not. Maybe the real me is slowly dying and all the words coming out are my true self's final cry:
save me
,
before I drown in everyone else's idea of who I am
. Maybe I'm meant to take a path that isn't straight. Where equations don't end in solutions, but in more questions. When I think about that possibility, the music in Lil's trailer shatters me. And I'm transported. Every word, every beat pounds in my heart and my limbs and I'm jumping inside and out. I don't care what I look like. I don't care if Lil laughs at me. I don't care if I'm supposed to step my foot here and kick my leg at this beat. I'm shaking off years of shackles I didn't know I was wearing and pounding my fist in the air and breaking the chains around my chest that tell me I can't be free, that tell me I can't be who and what I want. I'm screaming all over again, this time not with my voice but with my whole body, writhing to the guitar and gruff voices of the song. Why is it so easy to dance freely here in this dingy place and not in my everyday life?

I open my eyes and look for Lil. She's doing the same thing. Falling in on herself and letting the music cover her. The buns on top of her head are loose from shaking; dark strands of hair fall in her face. I fling my head, trying to clear it of everything and just live in the moment. In the music.

As it flows around the trailer, bouncing off the walls and circling through the air, I laugh and scream and shake my hair until it's tangled in knots so gnarled they might never come out. But when the song ends and I'm back in my skin and my brain, I worry that if the tangles get too deep, I might have to cut all my hair off.

Then how would I recognize myself?

***

"Where does your mom work?" I ask Lil later that night. We're sitting on the roof of her grandpa's barn. The sky is clear.

"At a restaurant about thirty miles away. She works the night shift most days."

"Why doesn't she have a job in town?" Lil doesn't answer, just lights a cigarette and exhales a long stream of smoke that grays the color of the sky. I decide to try another question. "What about your dad?"

"Rolling down some lonesome highway, maybe. Or dead in a ditch. Either way, our relationship would be the same. Nonexistent." Lil takes another drag on her cigarette.

No dad? I don't know what it would feel like to take a million breaths and not know your father for any of them. Even on my worst day, I wouldn't want my parents to leave.

I change the subject. "Are you going to the dance next weekend?"

Lil sits up on her elbows. "The Hot Shot dance? I don't think so."

"Why not? I promise it will be fun."

"I don't do organized school functions."

"Please." I nudge her in the side and she breaks into a smile.

"No. Besides, you'll be busy dancing with Alexander the Great Big Boner."

I roll my eyes and touch Matt's bracelet.

"He's just a friend. I like someone else, anyway," I say.

I really want Lil to come. I think going to a school dance might help her shake some of the black cloud around her.