The Fold (20 page)

“Yeah.”

“We’ll have to keep her away from the dark side.” Sam slid the lip balm back in his pocket. “This stuff really works. My lips feel better already.”

Joyce snuck a peek at Sam leaning back in his striped beach chair, his hands comfortably clasped on top of his stomach, his lips slick with moisturizer. He had said “we” as though they were Gina’s closest friends. As though he was already in her life.

Joyce’s sixth sense went into overdrive.

“Have you and Gina been talking a lot lately?” Joyce asked as casually as possible.

“Yeah,” Sam said, not catching her eyes. He couldn’t help himself. A second later, a small smile opened his face. “When she does that Godzilla thing”—Sam chuckled at the memory—“man, I almost peed my pants laughing the first time she did that imitation. I was the biggest Godzilla fan when I was, like, eight or nine.”

Joyce broke out into laughter. “She is SO cute when she does that!”

“Yeah,” Sam said, still smiling to himself. “I make her say that line every time we see each other.”

“I see,” she said and leaned back into her beach chair. Joyce smiled to herself as she felt the sun sinking
into her body. She couldn’t wait to pry all the details from Gina. Joyce noticed a light sprinkling of drops hit the cement. She glanced up at the sky, wondering if it was starting to rain.

Andy and Jason stood on the second-floor landing, shooting their water guns and trying not to laugh hysterically.

“Nice try, Andy,” Joyce yelled, closing her eyes. “The water will feel good if you manage to hit us.”

Andy called down, “Who said it was water?”

Joyce and Sam bolted from their chairs and ran after the boys.

sunday
morning, as everyone was scrambling to get ready for Sunday service, Gina walked into the apartment, dressed for church in a white eyelet sundress and carrying a matching purse. Uhmma and Apa paused midstep on their way to the kitchen. Andy looked up from his video game. Helen stopped clearing the breakfast plates. And Joyce put down the phone she had just picked up to call Gina.

“Gina!” Joyce yelped with joy and ran to her friend. Uhmma and Apa smiled. Andy waved as he looked down at his game again, and Helen simply nodded as she picked up the rest of the plates and headed over to the sink.

“We have to talk,” Gina muttered and flicked her eyes toward Joyce’s bedroom.

“I know,” Joyce said and led the way back to her room.

After Joyce closed the door and then opened it quickly to make sure Andy wasn’t snooping, Joyce pressed her back to the door and faced Gina.

“I’m so sorry—” Joyce started.

“We can talk about that later.” Gina rushed to Joyce’s side. “I just heard that John and his father are coming to church today.”

Joyce’s hands leaped to her eyes. “What! Today? Sunday, today?”

“Yes!” Gina said.

Joyce sank to the ground. “I can’t do it,” Joyce whispered. “I can’t. I can’t see him without my eyes.”

Gina reached down and pulled Joyce back up. “Come on. We have some work to do.”

Joyce stared at her friend. “What are you talking about?”

Gina removed her purse. “I’ve got you covered.”

Joyce and Gina sat on the floor and studied the invisible double-sided tape that Gina had picked up from the Asian cosmetics lady at the department store.

“Arlene said that we can cut it with some scissors to match the crease.”

“Are you sure it’s going to work?” Joyce asked.

Gina shrugged. “Arlene said it should be a snap.”

Joyce spontaneously reached over and embraced Gina in a hug. Tears sprang to Joyce’s eyes. It was so good to have Gina back.

Gina patted Joyce’s back. “Sam told me he talked to you.”

Joyce pulled back and grinned at her friend. “I thought you only did the Godzilla imitation for me.”

Gina lowered her eyes and tried not to smile. “Yeah, well, he’s kind of special.”

Joyce pumped her arms in the air. “I knew it!”

Gina rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. Let’s focus. We only have a half hour before church, and someone isn’t even dressed.”

Joyce glanced down at her pajamas. “We better get moving. Let me get my scissors.” Joyce ran over to her bureau and began rummaging through the stuff that always magically collected there.

A sharp knock at the door was followed by Helen’s head poking in. “Can I just get my clothes for church?”

Joyce waved her in. “Sure.”

Helen stepped inside and headed over to the closet. Joyce pushed aside papers and keys and ponytail holders. “Helen, have you seen my scissors anywhere?”

“There’s a pair inside my orange book bag,” Helen said, pointing to her tropical bags in the corner.

“Thanks,” Joyce said and started to cross the room to fetch the scissors. As she was passing Helen, Joyce gave her an imploring look and quickly cut her eyes to Gina, who was still sitting on the floor, assembling all the brushes and makeup for Joyce’s makeover. It was important to Joyce that she clear the air with Gina. For as long as Joyce had been Gina’s friend, they had shared everything with each other. She wanted Gina and Helen to know that Joyce trusted Gina completely.

Helen pressed her lips together for a moment and then threw her hands up in the air. Joyce mouthed silently, Thank you.

Helen nodded and pulled a dress and some shoes from the closet. Joyce found the scissors and brought them over to Gina. Before Helen left the room, she stood at the door for a moment. Joyce glanced up and saw the line of pain etched into her sister’s forehead. Helen slowly turned away from the two best friends and left the room, closing the door behind her.

“I have to tell you something, Gina,” Joyce said.

Gina raised up the piece of tape and held it near Joyce’s eyes. “In a minute,” Gina said. “Let’s just do the hard part first and then we can talk while we work on your makeup.”

“Okay,” Joyce sighed and held still as Gina brought the tape closer.

“Darn,” Gina said and lowered the crescent-moon-shaped piece of tape. “I have to cut it some more.”

After several more tries and with tape stuck to every part of their hands, Gina carefully applied a thin sliver of tape to Joyce’s right eyelid.

“Okay,” Joyce said. “Dr. Reiner used his tweezers and kind of lifted part of my eyelid skin.”

Gina grabbed her tweezers and zeroed in on Joyce’s eyes.

“Whoa, cowboy,” Joyce said and leaned back. “I still want my vision after you’re done.”

Gina raised one eyebrow and cleared her throat, the tweezers still raised in the air. Joyce slowly leaned forward. Gina gently grasped a bit of Joyce’s upper eyelid skin and pulled it up.

“Is it working?” Joyce asked nervously, trying hard not to blink.

Gina stared at Joyce’s eyes. “Hold on one second.”
Gina positioned the tweezers at the outer edge of Joyce’s eyes and pinched some skin.

“Ow, ow, ow, owwwww!” Joyce’s voice grew louder in proportion to the pain.

Gina’s eyes were crossed in concentration. “I almost have it. There.” Gina took a deep breath and sat back.

Joyce reached up to the very edge of her eye, trying to massage the pinching pain away.

“Stop, Joyce,” Gina said. “You’ll ruin it.”

Joyce lowered her hand. “That hurt.”

Gina ignored her comment and went right on cutting the next sliver of tape for the other eye. Joyce dug through Gina’s pile of makeup for a compact to check her eyelid.

“Wow!” Joyce exclaimed as she checked the fold in the mirror. “It looks perfect!”

Gina mumbled as she cut, “You always doubt me.”

Joyce lowered the mirror. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

Joyce opened her mouth to disagree again but then stopped. What was she fighting about? Gina was here, despite the way Joyce had acted on the beach, despite the fact that Joyce had not called all week to apologize. Gina was here to rescue Joyce. There was no question
about it. Joyce reached over and touched Gina’s elbow. Gina was here for Joyce.

“Sorry,” Joyce said.

“It’s okay,” Gina said, her head still lowered in concentration as she carefully cut. “Ready for the next one?”

Joyce nodded.

Gina held up the tape. “Okay, you have to turn off the waterworks.”

Joyce smiled and blinked back the tears.

“Better,” Gina said and smiled.

After the second eyelid was taped back, Gina quickly worked on Joyce’s makeup. As she was lightly dusting Joyce with some powder to set the eye shadow, Joyce tried to broach the subject of Helen.

“Hey, Gina,” Joyce said, “I have to tell you something.”

Gina flicked the brush across Joyce’s forehead and then sat back.

“I have to tell you something, too,” Gina said.

“Helen—”

“Sam—”

They both stopped.

“You go. I want to hear all about Sam,” Joyce said.

Gina fiddled with her brush. “When Sam and I first started hanging out, he told me how he kind of had this crush on you.”

“What?” Joyce exclaimed. “But he likes you.”

Gina nodded. “That only happened after we had hung out this week and then I did the Godzilla line.”

Joyce grinned. “You broke him with the Godzilla line. Man, I can’t wait to tell that to your kids.”

“Shut up.” Gina laughed and threw the brush at Joyce. “It wasn’t like that.” Gina grew serious. “I didn’t mean for him to stop liking you, but it wasn’t as if you liked him that way and I needed someone to talk to who could understand. He was so nice about everything. I don’t know. Everything started to change after I took him to the department store to get him some lip balm.”

“Yeah,” Joyce said. “He mentioned how impressed he was with your knowledge.”

“Really?” Gina perked up. “What else did he say about me?”

Joyce wanted to stop time for a moment. To catch that shy happy smile on Gina’s face. To savor the feeling of closeness. To memorize every passing second because next summer, after senior year, they weren’t going to
have all the time in the world to talk. They might even be clear across the country from each other.

“Joyce?”

Joyce blinked and turned to Gina. “He just said he thought you were wonderful.”

Gina beamed. “He’s pretty cool, too. Did he tell you about his skin?”

“Yeah,” Joyce said.

“It’s almost over,” Gina said. “I had no idea the side effects could be so bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like that day on the beach,” Gina said. “He’s not supposed to be in the sun for too long, but he wanted to finish up the project, and he got this killer headache afterwards.”

“Didn’t help that I was a bitch, either,” Joyce muttered.

Gina didn’t disagree. “Anyway, the side effects are mostly over now that he’s tapering off of the medication.” Gina opened up her lip gloss case and stared down at the little squares of various shades of red as she added, “His skin will clear up just in time for him to dump me when I get those nasty metal braces.”

Joyce leaned forward. “You’re getting braces?”

Gina shrugged. “Yeah. It’s about time, and I don’t
want to have them forever in college, which would be the kiss of death, right?” Gina glanced up, her face held tightly in place. “I finally have enough money saved up.”

“I thought you wanted braces,” Joyce said.

Gina stared up at the ceiling. “I do, I do, but I hate the thought of how ugly they are.” Gina pointed at Joyce. “You said it yourself about Lynn, remember? How ugly her metal braces made her look.”

“Yeah, but Lynn doesn’t even look like you and—”

Gina shook her head. “They’re going to look awful. I don’t even know what colors to coordinate with gunmetal gray.” Gina threw up her hands. “Seriously, what matches with ugly?” Gina waited a beat. “More ugly,” she said and pointed a finger at herself.

“Gina, no. That’s not true. You are not going to look ugly.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. My teeth will get straight, and maybe my bucks will finally get into line,” Gina said. “I just hope Sam sticks around, but knowing my luck, he’ll take one look at my jaws of death and run the other direction.”

Joyce patted Gina’s back, trying to think of something to make her feel better, something to rescue her from her fate.

Someone knocked at the door. Joyce turned around as Andy poked his head in. “Uhmma says it’s time to go.”

“Okay,” Joyce said.

Andy started to pull his head back and then stopped. “Black goes with everything,” he said and quickly shut the door.

“Your lips,” Gina said and held out her lip gloss brush.

Joyce turned back to Gina and let her apply the mauve color to her lips.

“What were you saying about Helen?” Gina asked.

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay,” Gina said and leaned back to inspect her handiwork. “You look beautiful.”

Joyce smiled without reaching for the compact to check Gina’s work. “Thank you.”

Gina and Joyce raced up the stairs leading from the parking lot to the church courtyard. A large group of people milled outside as they waited for their turn to enter the main hall. Gina and Joyce got into line and then immediately leaned out to see past the bodies.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” Gina said, craning her head.