Beautiful Girls Page 5

  He shook his head and slid down the locker to the floor, rubbing his temples. I stared at his big feet. “I used to wait, thinking you’d want to be my girlfriend again, but you don’t and now I don’t want you to be—so what are we doing here?” He placed his hands out in front of him, and I looked at the space between them, a space I could slide right into if I wanted to. His hands fell to his lap, and I squatted down next to him and thought about touching him.

  “So, okay, we’re not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend,” I said quietly.

  “We’re just going to be friends.” We sat in the hallway as other kids filtered by, their voices echoing down the hall. In the silence, Ben was telling me we wouldn’t get naked anymore, we wouldn’t talk on the phone at midnight, we wouldn’t hang out at his house, we wouldn’t hang out together with Connie. He was also telling me about Pamela Zlotkin. He was telling me many things I didn’t want to hear.

  It’d been raining for days, and the wintry sky hung low over the town. I rode my bike down Main Street, empty and slick with puddles, and stared at the posters of five smiling girls in the store windows. There we were—me, Inggy, Pamela Zlotkin and two other girls—Miss Merry Christmas nominees—displayed next to shoes, pizza pies, postage stamps and interest rates, waiting for the town to crown a winner. I parked under a street lamp and stared and stared, secretly feeling the thrill of good luck and good genes. It was a decent picture of me, not like I must have looked now—a girl in the rain with her hair plastered to her head.

  Even though it embarrassed me to admit it, I really really wanted to win. I wanted to see what winning might do for me. But I knew Inggy would win; she seemed destined. At the moment the school photographer had snapped her picture, the wind swept a long strand of white hair clear over her head and she hollered with glee. I remembered thinking this was what Daisy Miller must have looked like before the malaria. Inggy was the most beautiful girl on the poster, although there was more to it than that. On that windy November day she was there in her photo, fully herself.

  I let myself in the side door where Connie stood at the stove making a big pot of chicken soup. “Hey, you,” she said. “Rice or egg noodles?”

  “Rice.” Ben and Pamela Zlotkin had gone to the movies. The news spread fast today, reaching my ears in Advanced Biology as I classified algae under the microscope.

  Connie threw me a dish towel, and I patted my wet head.

  “I think Ben really likes this Pam Zlotkin girl,” I said. I thought I wanted to talk about this, to hear words instead of my own rattling thoughts.

  Connie smiled. “You okay, Dani?”

  “Sure,” I lied. Something felt lost, something I didn’t think I wanted. Connie put a bowl of soup in front of me and handed me a spoon. I felt flushed and confused, the heat of soup and memories welling up inside of me. “Do you think I broke his heart, Connie?” Lately I’d been counting my favorite people: Inggy, Ben, Connie. I would say their names to myself, carrying them with me like essential items in my pocketbook—lip gloss, money, keys. I hoped I hadn’t broken him, yet part of me hoped I had.

  Connie skimmed the fat off the top of the pot, dropping the grease into a measuring cup. She smiled into the soup. “You two will always be friends, don’t you think?”

  I nodded weakly, but I wanted to know about the state of his heart. I wanted to know about the state of mine. “If Pam Zlotkin becomes his girlfriend, how will I ever come over here?” I asked.

  “You better come over, Dani.” I’d once run mayonnaise through Connie’s hair to give it some shine and she wound up with greasy hair for a week, but she was so cool about it. She wrapped a bandanna around her head and that was that. I couldn’t imagine not having her as my friend, not spending time in this house. Sometimes on a Saturday night Ben and I would pull out the sleeping bags and watch late movies. We’d fool around and fall asleep with popcorn still in our teeth. When we woke up, Connie would make French toast, and wrapped in sweaters we’d eat on the porch with the morning light washing over us.

  I wondered how much Connie knew about me and Ben, though her knowing everything might have changed things between us. I wanted to tell her this: As my friend, Ben had a life and there were other things in his line of vision. But as his girlfriend, his life shrunk and I was the only thing playing on his screen. Seeing Ben at the end of the day waiting by my locker became as ordinary and predictable as rolling out of bed in the morning. I just thought I wanted more. I didn’t know what, but was pretty sure I’d know if I found it, or if it found me.

  Connie came up behind me and kissed me lightly on top of my wet head.

  I snuggled with Daffodil on the couch in the den while Mom and Franz fought in the living room. They’d been having spats all week, and they’d stopped smiling at each other and started rolling their eyes when they thought the other wasn’t looking. “Trouble,” Dorrie said, from the other end of the couch, where she chewed on a strand of hair.

  Daffodil wore a sequined purple bodysuit, and her dark, shiny hair was pulled into a ponytail. Violet eye shadow sparkled above her long lashes. “What’s this?” I said, wiping her face clean with the bottom of my T-shirt.

  “Get off,” she yelled.

  “You want to turn into a slut?”

  “No,” she yelled.

  “Then clean up your act.”

  She already had boys calling the house, but it wasn’t anything really. She’d say, “You’re a faggot.” Then he’d say, “No, you are.” “No, you.” “You.” “You.”—like that until one of them would get tired and say, “See you tomorrow.” Now she rubbed up against me. She wanted to be me; she would tell me this. “You’re going to be Miss Merry Christmas,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You’re the prettiest,” she said. Her teeth were tiny and white, her eyes all dark pupils. Her head lay in the crook of my arm, and she motioned for me to bring my ear close. I leaned down and she told me how she and some of her older friends, girls in the fourth and fifth grades, had gone to every store on Main Street and voted for me, filling out a white slip and dropping it into the box beneath our pictures. “I disguised my handwriting,” she whispered. “Don’t worry.”

  After my sisters and I had pigged out on pot roast and gravy, I started wondering if Ben might call me. I lay on the couch, shaving my legs and dipping the razor into a Dixie cup filled with soapy, hairy water. Dorrie and Daffodil lay on their backs on the carpet, painting their fingernails red. After a bitter fight, Mom and Franz were out to dinner. The phone was silent.

  Inggy walked through the front door. “Hey, Dan,” she yelled, coming into the den and spreading college catalogs all around the coffee table. We had to start thinking of these things, she told me. Look at this, check this out—she spoke a mile a minute. “This one has environmental science.” There was a picture of a weenie kid standing in a sludgy bog, holding a beaker. “What kind of science do you like best?” she asked me. I shrugged, dropping the razor into the Dixie cup.

  “Dorrie,” I said, “go get me some socks, will you?”

  “Get your own,” she said, blowing on a nail. “I’m not going down there.”

  “We’ve got a stink,” Daffodil told Inggy. Inggy opened the cellar door and gagged. “Come away from there,” Daffodil said, taking her hand.

  “Are you guys waiting until the whole house is a giant stink bomb? Let’s see what it is, Dani.”

  “Inggy, sit down,” I said, getting pissed off. She came over here, waving catalogs, telling me to be some scientist, telling me what to do about the stink. I stared into that sludgy-brown bog, wishing she could somehow fall into it.

  “Come on, lazy,” she said, giving me a tug.

  “Leave it alone, Inggy,” I said, quietly. Daffodil and Dorrie looked at me, their red nails flashing brightly. Inggy looked at me for a second, then started down the cellar stairs. I hated her then; for a few burning seconds I loathed my friend, who was beautiful and faultless and braving the stinking bas
ement. I leapt off the couch and grabbed one of her long arms and easily yanked her up the steps. “I’ll see you later,” I said, pushing the catalogs into her arms.

  “Dani!” Inggy cried. “Are you insane?”

  “Out,” I whispered.

  “No!” Inggy said. Daffodil and Dorrie crept up beside me and eyed Inggy. We stood there tensely, and I finally shoved Inggy toward the front door, and Dorrie and Daffodil jumped in, poking and jabbing. We spun big skinny Inggy in a circle, her catalogs falling out of her arms. We knocked into a wall, jiggling a picture. “Our stink,” I cried, “is none of your business.”

  “You big snoop,” Daffodil hollered, giving her a kick in the shin.

  “Who do you think you are?” Dorrie shouted, pulling a wad of that white hair. We got Inggy to the front door and pushed her onto the stoop. I locked the door behind her, feeling lost and sick. My best friend in the world. So cocky, so sure of herself. I wouldn’t be Miss Merry Christmas, she would.

  She rang the doorbell. Inggy never rang the bell, she always walked right in.

  “What?” I said, opening the door a crack.

  “Dani,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  Daffodil squeezed in next to me and gave Inggy the evil eye. “Don’t,” I said, clasping Daffodil’s small head and nudging her away. “Inggy,” I said, “I’ll call you later.”

  We trooped back into the den and sat on the couch, not saying anything. I knew what we had to do. We had to take some action. It was time. The stench was dizzying, and my sisters clutched my arms as we made our way downstairs. Daffodil went straight to the clothesline in the back of the cellar, pinched shut her nose with a clothespin and then stood in the corner with her eyes tightly closed, her glittery bodysuit and matching socks shimmering in the low light.

  Dorrie started to sniff while I stood on a bucket and opened all the windows the best I could. Dorrie pointed under the freezer. Holding my nose, I kneeled. Something was wedged underneath. I used the mop handle and worked out a putrid, decaying pork chop with a swarm of wriggling maggots inside. Daffodil came running over, and both my sisters looked up at me with big eyes. “Gross,” Dorrie whispered.

  “How did the bugs get inside, Dani?” Daffodil asked.

  I said a leftover summer fly must’ve thought the stinking pork chop was a great place to lay eggs. “Which one of you dopes dropped the chop?” They each pointed a mean little finger at the other. I went for the shovel, Daffodil propped the front door open, and Dorrie dragged a garbage can to the curb. I scooped up the rotting chop and sailed up the stairs and through the front door, stopping short on the lawn. Garbage pick-up wasn’t for three more days. The stink would still be with us.

  “Let’s bury it,” I said.

  We stood in the backyard under a dark moon and a web of stringy clouds, digging a hole. “Give me an ‘S,’” Daffodil shouted. “Give me a ‘T,’ give me an ‘I-N-K.’” Shivering, Dorrie and I took turns working the shovel into the hard ground, and when we got a semi-deep cockeyed hole I kicked in the chop and covered it with dirt. We stomped on the hole, dancing it smooth with our feet.

  “The stink is out of our lives!” I yelled.

  “Victory cheer!” Dorrie shouted.

  “Oooolala we kicked some ass

  Oooolala we showed some sass

  Oooolala we had some fun

  Oooolala of course we won!”

  We did the chicken walk across the hole, flapping our elbows and wobbling our knees. We buzzed around each other and gave high fives and whooped it up. A few of our neighbors’ porch lights went on, and we whooped it up some more. We did spring rolls in front of the bushes and flying wontons along the weedy fence. Daffodil started turning cartwheels, one after the other, and Dorrie and I joined in, the three of us whirling crazy under the night sky. Then I did a vault over a garbage can, my hands pushing off the lid and my legs spread wide, as I shot through the cold air and landed with a one-two hop right in front of my sisters. Their eyes were hugely dark and alive, their hair popping out of the elastics, their breath coming out in frosty little clouds.

  Daffodil grabbed me tightly and covered me with frantic kisses. Dorrie’s eyes traveled carefully from me to Daffodil, from me to Daffodil, and watching her watch us, I understood how things were for Dorrie. My heart caught and I turned away. As we ran to the back door, I reached for Dorrie, but she dipped under my arm and sprang up the steps.

  Inggy and I sat on the bed of the float sharing a bag of corn chips and staring at her one-hundred-dollar bill. It was crisp and new and made a snapping noise when the wind gathered beneath us. “I wish we’d both won,” she said. I nodded halfheartedly. She folded the bill in half, hiked up her cape, and pocketed it.

  Today Inggy wore a little pearly eye shadow and some lipstick, and the rhinestone tiara sparkled on her head. The red velvet cape was too short on her and her jeans and sneakers stuck out the bottom. Pamela Zlotkin and the other girls and I wore white velvet capes. I wore my hair up and thought I looked particularly French.

  A folding chair was perched atop the specially made staircase sitting in the middle of the float. “Come,” I said, climbing the staircase because I wanted to try out the chair and see the view. The day was cold, crisp and gray. Behind us were our school’s marching band, flag twirlers, a float with gift-wrapped people standing around a Christmas tree, another float with assorted elves. “Inggy,” I whispered, “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “Good things, good things,” she said, checking out Main Street. There were honks and toots and mini drum rolls as the band warmed up. A baton shot through the air and plummeted into a twirler’s hand.

  “Places, girls,” a fat man from the Chamber of Commerce said to us, and I slowly climbed down and took my place on the right rear corner of the float. Next to me were Styrofoam stars attached to broom handles.

  We crept along to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” as people on the sidewalks waved to us. Inggy’s parents, the very tall and brightly blond Oberlanders, snapped pictures and galloped alongside us for a block. “Inggy! Dani!” they called. “Over here, love. Big, big smile.” Inggy sat on the folding chair, flushed yet pleased, beaming her big, big smile down on her mom and dad.

  Mom and Franz had decided to call it quits, and she’d taken to wearing dark glasses as if someone had died. She demanded super quiet. Even walking around in our socks and opening the refrigerator door would make her scream and send us scattering to far corners of the house. This morning I’d left her on the couch with her diet soda, Motrin, box of tissues, can of mixed nuts, and the TV Guide, and I knew she’d still be on the couch when I got home, that she might be there for a long time. I hoped she’d find a new boyfriend, I hoped she’d soon put on her three-inch heels again and leave us in peace. But why couldn’t she have dragged her butt off the couch and brought the Instamatic and been here today? Even if it was me up there on the folding chair with the crown on my head, I knew she’d still be horizontal under the afghan in her dark glasses.

  There was nothing to do but wave my arm. My sisters were boycotting the parade, at least that was what they said for the hundredth time when I left them this morning, slurping up Fruit Loops and glued to cartoons. The week before when they found out I hadn’t won they both cried, but it was Daffodil who sobbed, huge tears running down her blotchy face, her whole body heaving. Maybe she had wanted me to pave the way for her. “You like Inggy, right?” I’d said, holding her hand.

  “Not anymore.”

  “But I get to ride on the float, too.”

  “So what?” she sobbed.

  I hoped they’d change their minds, and I kept a lookout for their pompomed hats as we rolled along. There was so much noise—“Deck the Halls,” the clapping and cheering, Santa and his ho ho ho’s. Kevin McSweeney leapt out of the crowd and ran alongside us, gaping up at Inggy. I looked for Ben but didn’t see him until we passed the hardware store, where he and a couple of his friends were sitting on bags of fert
ilizer. We both waved, but I couldn’t tell if we were waving to each other. “Ben,” I heard myself whisper. “Ben.” What if he’d been meant for me and me for him?

  Up ahead on the sidewalk Connie waved to Pamela Zlotkin, who stood on the front of our float, and I wondered if they liked each other. I wondered if Pamela had sat in Connie’s warm kitchen on the chair with the blue polka-dotted cushion next to the radiator, the chair I always sat in. Connie saw me and blew a kiss. I blew one back and turned and stared in her direction long after we passed.

  Then I saw my sisters, hiding behind a mailbox in front of the savings and loan and watching for me. As the float glided toward them, they pushed their way into the street and stood there wide-eyed while I waved like mad. “That’s my sister!” Daffodil shouted, pointing at me. Both Dorrie and Daffodil looked as if they were waiting for something to happen, and I too almost expected something to happen then, but the float coasted on indifferently like a cloud through the sky, and I lost them in the crowd.

  The air was still and calm and cold. I’d heard it would snow later tonight, the first snow of the year. It was only supposed to be a light dusting, but I hoped it would be enough to cover the town in a clean sheet of white.

  All of a sudden we stopped short. I stumbled, nearly stepping on Inggy’s tiara, which landed by my feet. It was hard to see what was happening so I climbed up the little staircase to Inggy, carrying her crown, and saw that up ahead a car had rear-ended a police cruiser at the intersection of Maple and Main, causing everything to come to a stop. Inggy inched over and I shared the folding chair with her. “You’re not crying, Dani, are you?” she said.

  “I’m not crying,” I said. She slung an arm over my shoulder and pulled the bag of corn chips from under her cape. That’s all I wanted then, to sit beside Inggy, eating corn chips and watching the standstill up ahead.

  In front of us, the ladies’ auxiliary put down their banner and lit cigarettes. Pamela Zlotkin still stood on her corner of the float, waving to a crowd that wasn’t paying attention while the two other girls hunched together in their billowy white velvet capes and seemed to be reading each other’s palms. I wondered what they saw there.