Tainted Frost, page 17
“How was practice?” I yell over the cacophony of all that banging.
“Brutal,” he replies. “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my arms. I can’t even feel my eyeballs.”
I fill the teakettle with water and set it on the stove, lighting the gas. I place the teacups side by side, placing a tea bag and two cubes of sugar into each one, then I lean back against the kitchen counter and close my eyes.
“But I don’t mind,” David continues. “I needed the practice. I was getting sloppy. I think I’m getting better. I just need to practice a little bit more. Gary wants me to do some drills with him one on one every day after work. I just can’t slack off anymore, you know? If I really want this, I have to go for it.”
He sounds like Natalie. I open my eyes and stare up at the ceiling light. Beside me, the water in the teakettle makes a gulping sound as it begins to boil.
“Gary says I don’t push myself hard enough. He says I have the potential, but that I hesitate too much. At first it pissed me off, but I’ve been thinking about it since he said it and he’s right. I always hesitate when I should be doing the opposite and playing harder. I don’t know why I do that.”
Because you’re scared, I want to tell him. Because you’re scared of what might happen if you push harder. You’re scared of what you’ll unleash.
“Well, now that you know your weakness, you can fight it,” I say. The water in the teakettle rages, desperate for release.
“Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see if practicing alone with Gary will help. We have a game after Christmas, and I really want to win. We have to. If we lose that one, it’ll be three losses in a row. That’ll suck.”
“I’m sure you’ll do great. The extra practices will help, and you already have the drive to win. You just gotta use it, you know?” I sound so unconvincing and lame. If my dad were here, he’d know exactly what to say to make David feel more confident.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess. I mean, we’ll see.”
The teakettle whistles, blasting a torrent of steam into the air. I lift it off the stove, glad to still have my gloves on, and pour into the waiting teacups. I take a cup in each hand and walk to the living room. Once we’re face to face, there’s a perceptible shift in mood, and we talk about less important things: Matilda’s party tonight, the weather lately, why I still have my gloves on. He doesn’t ask me about the first half of my day, and I’m so grateful that I actually relax, settling back against the couch with my teacup in my hands.
Chapter 20
I’m parked in Nat’s driveway. Through the windshield, I can see her window, the pale blue curtains drawn. We’re supposed to get ready for Matilda’s party together, but I’m reluctant to go in. I can’t get this morning out of my head. The way her eyes seemed to pierce me with that hard glint of anger, or jealousy, or both. I almost felt hated, but I know she doesn’t hate me. I know that. We never really fight or argue. The most that ever happens is that we have these tense moments, these awkward moments, like we did earlier today, that are eventually diffused by the time the sun rises the next morning. They’re really never a big deal, but sometimes I wonder if they will ultimately pile up all on top of one another, the way tiny, innocuous snowflakes gather into large, intimidating mounds of snow, and smother our friendship.
Nat’s big on goals—writing them down, ranking them in terms of highest and lowest importance, actually accomplishing them. She’s definitely a doer, whereas I’m more of a passive observer, which I guess is redundant. I mean, are observers ever aggressive? Can you aggressively observe someone? My question is answered when I remember my relentless staring down of Alex the other night at Jerry’s. If my eyes were barnacles, they’d attach themselves to Alex and you wouldn’t be able to burn them off with a blowtorch. So maybe I’m an aggressive observer, but I’m still certainly not a doer. Natalie’s the one who beats goals into crippling submission, until their bits and pieces are twitching helplessly, like the little feet on a cockroach after it meets its mortal enemy, the boot. Twitch-twitch. Die.
I’ve never known Nat not to check off all the tasks on her daily to-do lists, which can span pages in her planner, before the day is over. So, I can’t pretend I don’t know where that look last night came from. She’s angry that I’ve been spending so much time with Alex when she still hasn’t made much progress with Gary. What’s worse is that the whole thing was her idea and I, the passive/aggressive observer, beat her to it.
I squeeze the steering wheel hard with both hands, looking up at Nat’s blue curtains, still drawn tight. Maybe she can hear my car idling below; maybe she even heard me pull up. She hasn’t looked to check though, and she always does. Anytime a car passes by outside, she rushes to the window and looks out. I never know who or what she’s expecting, because she often turns away with a look of disappointment.
With a sigh, I put the car in Reverse, check my mirrors, and start backing out of their driveway so I can go home. I’m almost on the road when the front door to Nat’s house swings open and her eight-year-old twin sisters come out, heading straight toward me and waving frantically. I put the car in Park.
“Hey,” one of them, Nicole, says, slamming her body against my door. “Natalie’s having, like, a crisis or something.” Her breath leaves a round smudge on my window and she draws a little valentine heart in it with her finger.
“She totally needs you right now,” the other one, Naomi, says. “Come on.” She opens the car door and proceeds to pull me out while I still have my seatbelt on.
“Jesus, hold your horses.” I undo my seatbelt and follow them to the house. Once inside, I make straight for Nat’s room, but Naomi and Nicole grab me and drag me to their room before I have a chance to protest. They push me down onto one of their beds and sit down on either side of me, effectively pinning me in place.
“She hasn’t been out of her room, like, all day,” Nicole says.
“It’s bad. It’s real bad,” Naomi confirms.
“Do you guys know why?” I ask.
“Nope. But it could be about a boy—“
“Or it could be about a shoe.”
They look at each other and nod, sure that these are the only possible reasons their sister could lock herself in her room all day.
“I should probably go check it out now,” I say. “Don’t you guys think?”
“Totally,” Nicole says.
“But be careful,” Naomi says. “I went in to take her some food and she threw a bangle at me.”
“She threw it at my head,” Naomi continues, pointing at her head to make sure I understand the gravity of the situation. “But it didn’t hit me.” She shows me her wrist, which is adorned with a thick black bracelet studded with colorful stones. “So it’s mine now.” She grins, thrusting the bracelet farther under my nose.
“It’s very pretty,” I say, gently pushing her hand away. “And I’m glad it didn’t hit you.”
“You better let me borrow it,” Nicole says, running her fingers over the bracelet. I rise up off the bed while they’re distracted by the shiny stones, sensing that this is my best chance for a clean getaway.
“Okay, um, guys, thanks for the warning. I’m gonna go talk to her now.”
“Good luck,” they call out in unison.
Nat’s door is slightly ajar. I peek and see her sitting in front of her computer, looking dejected, her hands in her hair. She doesn’t look up when I enter. I approach her gingerly.
“Nat?”
No response. I take a few more careful steps toward her. “You okay? What’s wrong? Your sisters told me you’ve been locked up in your room all day. Like a smelly hermit.” I add that last part hoping it will shame her out of this mood, since the last thing she’d like to be compared to is a smelly hermit. It seems to work. She finally acknowledges my presence, moving her hands and brushing her hair off her face. She still looks dejected though.
“Are you going to tell me what’s bugging you?” I ask. “Or do I have to threaten to destroy one of your handmade pillows? You know the ones that you spend hours embroidering and making perfect and adding all those little bows and glitter?”
She flips her hand in this careless way. “Go ahead,” she says. “Destroy all of them. What’s the point when I’m clearly a complete failure as a blogger and aspiring designer? I might as well die.”
“Okay, seriously, tell me what’s wrong.”
“I just can’t handle these comments anymore. I’m weak, okay? I’m weak. I’m not rubber and every mean thing people say doesn’t just bounce off of me.”
“Anonymous Asshole strikes again?”
She nods, looking very glum. “Yup.”
I pull up a chair and sit beside her at her computer desk. I place my palm in front of the comments section. “Stop staring at it; it’s only going to make you feel worse. I’m going to delete it, okay?”
“Sure, whatever. It won’t matter though, I already memorized the whole thing.”
“Nat.”
“I know. I’m such a masochist. But she called my designs “fugly”! How can I not get offended by that? Plus, she said that my personal style is “completely unoriginal,” that I’m just a “trend follower who doesn’t have one creative bone in her body” and that I wouldn’t know fashion if it “smacked me in the face with a four-inch Louboutin stiletto.” She makes angry air quotes throughout this speech.
“Poor Christian Louboutin. He doesn’t deserve to get sucked into this.”
Nat doesn’t laugh. “Maybe she’s right though. Maybe I do suck. Maybe my designs really are fugly. I’m doomed. I’m a failure. I’ll never amount to anything.”
“Your designs are not fugly, Nat. Plus it’s just one comment. Don’t let it get to you.”
“I’m trying,” she says. “And failing. I don’t know what to do about this,” she indicates the offensive comment on the screen. “I don’t want it to get to me. I try not to let it get to me. But it does. It just does.”
I lean forward to get a closer look at the comment. It was posted by IDoItBetter23 at 3:43am. Clearly, somebody is losing sleep over Nat’s blog and, more than likely, her blog’s popularity. I’d always thought Anonymous Asshole was just an internet troll, a bored, possibly anti-social person who had nothing better to do than trawl random blogs and generally annoy the heck out of others, but now that Natalie has confirmed that this person is from Haven and somebody we may possibly know, I’m not so sure about my original theory.
“Do you still think it’s Matilda?” I ask.
“Yup. It makes perfect sense. She’s always trying to get me to feature her on the blog and I never do it. That’s definitely a reason for her to hate me. And she’s always acting super friendly around us, which I think is just a tactic so we don’t suspect her. But I’m onto her. She’s not gonna fool me anymore.”
“I can’t lie. You make good points.”
“It’s driving me crazy. I feel stupid for letting it bother me, but I really can’t help it. I’m afraid to even check the comments section now, and it’s giving me so much anxiety. This blog used to be an escape for me and now it’s turning into a place that I really want to avoid. I don’t know. I just feel awful.” She drops her face into her hands. I panic, thinking she’s going to start crying, but then she snaps her head back up.
“That’s it!” she says. “I’m gonna disable commenting. That’ll show this coward. Seriously, I should’ve done this years ago.” She clicks on the mouse and I watch as the cursor flies across the screen, hovering over the Personal Settings tab. “Who do they think they are, you know? There. Done.” She crosses her arms and sits back in her chair. “Stupid commenters.”
“Totally stupid.”
“Completely and utterly stupid.”
“So stupid they wouldn’t know a…a…”
“A Louboutin from a Blahnik!” Natalie says.
I point at her. “Exactly.”
She grins wide. “I love you. You’re really cheering me up right now.” She jumps up from her chair and walks over to her closet. “Okay. So. What are we wearing tonight?”
She forages through her closet, tossing things out. I wonder if I should bring up this morning, that jealous look in her eyes, but of course I won’t do that. It seems we’ve made up and bringing that whole thing up now will just make things awkward.
“I might wear a sweater dress. I have this cute black one. I wanna wear it with tights and my combat boots,” I say instead. “You should wear that red sweater dress you have. The off-shoulder one.
“Yeah, but I don’t wanna be too Christmas-y.” She throws some clothes on one of the beanbag chairs and disappears into her closet again.
After another half hour of tossing clothes on the floor, she finally settles on black tights and a slinky slip dress with purple lace trim worn with chunky lace-up ankle boots. She wraps two studded black belts tightly around her waist and loops a silver necklace with a skull charm through the buckles. The skull charm dangles down over her right thigh. She puts on some lip gloss and looks sultry and dangerous with her red lips against her dark skin, and her long black hair falling over her shoulders.
“Wow, you look hot,” I say, looking her up and down. “Like a supermodel.”
“Thanks.” She beams. “Gary, here I come.”
We both laugh.
“So, you’re sure about your sweater dress?” she asks. “You can borrow anything of mine, you know.”
“I know, but I like the dress I have in mind. I’ll take some accessories though.”
“I have just the thing.”
She gives me a brass key necklace with tiny gold flowers circling the top, a few silver and gold bracelets, and a black leather belt to cinch in at the waist. The bracelets jingle at the slightest movement, but I can live with it for the night. I stroke the necklace, feeling the raised embellishments on the key poke into my thumb.
“I like it,” I tell her.
“I know, isn’t it great? It has this sort of gothic femininity to it.”
“Gothic femininity. Right.”
“Looks great on you.”
“Thanks.” I tug at the necklace, sliding the pendant back and forth on the chain. “One more request. Will you contour the hell out of my face?”
Natalie grabs my arm and pulls me toward her vanity, grinning. “I,” she says dramatically, a hand pressed to her chest, “would be honored.”
“I wanna look crazy hot tonight. I think Alex might be there this time.”
“He better be. I can’t believe he bailed on Joanna’s party and the bonfire.”
“His brothers are sick,” I say easily, like I’ve started to believe the lie myself. “He’s helping his mom take care of them.”
“That’s great, but he might get sick himself if they’re that bad. My sisters say they haven’t seen them around all of break.”
“They have the flu,” I say. “They’re in quarantine.”
“I guess that’s for the best.”
She arranges all the products she’ll need for contouring on her vanity and gets to work. “You’re gonna look amazing after I’m done. And trust me, you’re in good hands.”
I’m in good hands, I repeat to myself and close my eyes as she takes a makeup brush and sweeps it lightly across my cheeks, over my nose and along my jaw.
Chapter 21
When we finally arrive at Matilda’s we’re not just fashionably late, we’re late late. We walk in without any fanfare and stand near the door for a moment, surveying the scene. The party is being held in the living room, and all the furniture has been pushed back against the walls, leaving an empty square of space in the middle, which at the moment resembles a sort of No Man’s Land. Like the center of the dance floor at every junior high school dance in the history of junior high school dances, no one dares to be the first to set foot there.
The lights have been dimmed, casting an unnatural yellow glow over everyone, making them look only half-formed. A blend of techno and hip hop blasts so loudly everything seems to vibrate, including my teeth. The nervous anticipation that had begun to build as soon as Nat and I left her house keeps building. I can feel my make-up resting thickly on my face. I imagine I can peel it off if I want to, and a part of me really wants to, but another part of me thinks of it as a veil, so I keep it on. The nervous anticipation, when it started, was maybe the size of a peanut, and now it’s the size of a grapefruit, lodged right between my chest and my stomach. The Grapefruit of Nervousness. I reach over and squeeze Nat’s hand. She squeezes back. I really hope she’s nervous too. With my hand in hers, she pulls me forward and we pass through No Man’s Land quickly, stopping by the refreshments table on the other side of the room. My eyes dart from face to face to face, trying to take it all in at once.
All the usual suspects are here. Marina and Jessica are sitting on the couch with their usual gang of girls, all of them gesturing and practically falling over each other as they try to get a word in. Sometimes I think Nat belongs with their sort more than with David and me, but she’s never shown any interest in hanging out with them, which makes me feel like I’ve won a big, shiny trophy just for being myself. I spot Gary standing with Zack at a dark corner of the room, somewhat isolated from everybody else. I know exactly when Nat sees him too, because she drops my hand and takes a step forward, like she’s about to go to him, but then she stops abruptly and turns to me.
“Gary’s here,” she says breathlessly.
“I know.”
“I feel weird. I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Please don’t aim at me if you do.”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to comfort me.”
“Just breath,” I say. “Everything’s gonna be okay. You’re not gonna throw up.”
She takes a deep breath. “How do I look?”
“Gorgeous.”
“How’s my hair?”
“Perfect.”
“Do I have anything on my face?”
“Just the usual stuff. Nose, eyes, mouth.”
“Anna.”
“Brutal,” he replies. “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my arms. I can’t even feel my eyeballs.”
I fill the teakettle with water and set it on the stove, lighting the gas. I place the teacups side by side, placing a tea bag and two cubes of sugar into each one, then I lean back against the kitchen counter and close my eyes.
“But I don’t mind,” David continues. “I needed the practice. I was getting sloppy. I think I’m getting better. I just need to practice a little bit more. Gary wants me to do some drills with him one on one every day after work. I just can’t slack off anymore, you know? If I really want this, I have to go for it.”
He sounds like Natalie. I open my eyes and stare up at the ceiling light. Beside me, the water in the teakettle makes a gulping sound as it begins to boil.
“Gary says I don’t push myself hard enough. He says I have the potential, but that I hesitate too much. At first it pissed me off, but I’ve been thinking about it since he said it and he’s right. I always hesitate when I should be doing the opposite and playing harder. I don’t know why I do that.”
Because you’re scared, I want to tell him. Because you’re scared of what might happen if you push harder. You’re scared of what you’ll unleash.
“Well, now that you know your weakness, you can fight it,” I say. The water in the teakettle rages, desperate for release.
“Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see if practicing alone with Gary will help. We have a game after Christmas, and I really want to win. We have to. If we lose that one, it’ll be three losses in a row. That’ll suck.”
“I’m sure you’ll do great. The extra practices will help, and you already have the drive to win. You just gotta use it, you know?” I sound so unconvincing and lame. If my dad were here, he’d know exactly what to say to make David feel more confident.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess. I mean, we’ll see.”
The teakettle whistles, blasting a torrent of steam into the air. I lift it off the stove, glad to still have my gloves on, and pour into the waiting teacups. I take a cup in each hand and walk to the living room. Once we’re face to face, there’s a perceptible shift in mood, and we talk about less important things: Matilda’s party tonight, the weather lately, why I still have my gloves on. He doesn’t ask me about the first half of my day, and I’m so grateful that I actually relax, settling back against the couch with my teacup in my hands.
Chapter 20
I’m parked in Nat’s driveway. Through the windshield, I can see her window, the pale blue curtains drawn. We’re supposed to get ready for Matilda’s party together, but I’m reluctant to go in. I can’t get this morning out of my head. The way her eyes seemed to pierce me with that hard glint of anger, or jealousy, or both. I almost felt hated, but I know she doesn’t hate me. I know that. We never really fight or argue. The most that ever happens is that we have these tense moments, these awkward moments, like we did earlier today, that are eventually diffused by the time the sun rises the next morning. They’re really never a big deal, but sometimes I wonder if they will ultimately pile up all on top of one another, the way tiny, innocuous snowflakes gather into large, intimidating mounds of snow, and smother our friendship.
Nat’s big on goals—writing them down, ranking them in terms of highest and lowest importance, actually accomplishing them. She’s definitely a doer, whereas I’m more of a passive observer, which I guess is redundant. I mean, are observers ever aggressive? Can you aggressively observe someone? My question is answered when I remember my relentless staring down of Alex the other night at Jerry’s. If my eyes were barnacles, they’d attach themselves to Alex and you wouldn’t be able to burn them off with a blowtorch. So maybe I’m an aggressive observer, but I’m still certainly not a doer. Natalie’s the one who beats goals into crippling submission, until their bits and pieces are twitching helplessly, like the little feet on a cockroach after it meets its mortal enemy, the boot. Twitch-twitch. Die.
I’ve never known Nat not to check off all the tasks on her daily to-do lists, which can span pages in her planner, before the day is over. So, I can’t pretend I don’t know where that look last night came from. She’s angry that I’ve been spending so much time with Alex when she still hasn’t made much progress with Gary. What’s worse is that the whole thing was her idea and I, the passive/aggressive observer, beat her to it.
I squeeze the steering wheel hard with both hands, looking up at Nat’s blue curtains, still drawn tight. Maybe she can hear my car idling below; maybe she even heard me pull up. She hasn’t looked to check though, and she always does. Anytime a car passes by outside, she rushes to the window and looks out. I never know who or what she’s expecting, because she often turns away with a look of disappointment.
With a sigh, I put the car in Reverse, check my mirrors, and start backing out of their driveway so I can go home. I’m almost on the road when the front door to Nat’s house swings open and her eight-year-old twin sisters come out, heading straight toward me and waving frantically. I put the car in Park.
“Hey,” one of them, Nicole, says, slamming her body against my door. “Natalie’s having, like, a crisis or something.” Her breath leaves a round smudge on my window and she draws a little valentine heart in it with her finger.
“She totally needs you right now,” the other one, Naomi, says. “Come on.” She opens the car door and proceeds to pull me out while I still have my seatbelt on.
“Jesus, hold your horses.” I undo my seatbelt and follow them to the house. Once inside, I make straight for Nat’s room, but Naomi and Nicole grab me and drag me to their room before I have a chance to protest. They push me down onto one of their beds and sit down on either side of me, effectively pinning me in place.
“She hasn’t been out of her room, like, all day,” Nicole says.
“It’s bad. It’s real bad,” Naomi confirms.
“Do you guys know why?” I ask.
“Nope. But it could be about a boy—“
“Or it could be about a shoe.”
They look at each other and nod, sure that these are the only possible reasons their sister could lock herself in her room all day.
“I should probably go check it out now,” I say. “Don’t you guys think?”
“Totally,” Nicole says.
“But be careful,” Naomi says. “I went in to take her some food and she threw a bangle at me.”
“She threw it at my head,” Naomi continues, pointing at her head to make sure I understand the gravity of the situation. “But it didn’t hit me.” She shows me her wrist, which is adorned with a thick black bracelet studded with colorful stones. “So it’s mine now.” She grins, thrusting the bracelet farther under my nose.
“It’s very pretty,” I say, gently pushing her hand away. “And I’m glad it didn’t hit you.”
“You better let me borrow it,” Nicole says, running her fingers over the bracelet. I rise up off the bed while they’re distracted by the shiny stones, sensing that this is my best chance for a clean getaway.
“Okay, um, guys, thanks for the warning. I’m gonna go talk to her now.”
“Good luck,” they call out in unison.
Nat’s door is slightly ajar. I peek and see her sitting in front of her computer, looking dejected, her hands in her hair. She doesn’t look up when I enter. I approach her gingerly.
“Nat?”
No response. I take a few more careful steps toward her. “You okay? What’s wrong? Your sisters told me you’ve been locked up in your room all day. Like a smelly hermit.” I add that last part hoping it will shame her out of this mood, since the last thing she’d like to be compared to is a smelly hermit. It seems to work. She finally acknowledges my presence, moving her hands and brushing her hair off her face. She still looks dejected though.
“Are you going to tell me what’s bugging you?” I ask. “Or do I have to threaten to destroy one of your handmade pillows? You know the ones that you spend hours embroidering and making perfect and adding all those little bows and glitter?”
She flips her hand in this careless way. “Go ahead,” she says. “Destroy all of them. What’s the point when I’m clearly a complete failure as a blogger and aspiring designer? I might as well die.”
“Okay, seriously, tell me what’s wrong.”
“I just can’t handle these comments anymore. I’m weak, okay? I’m weak. I’m not rubber and every mean thing people say doesn’t just bounce off of me.”
“Anonymous Asshole strikes again?”
She nods, looking very glum. “Yup.”
I pull up a chair and sit beside her at her computer desk. I place my palm in front of the comments section. “Stop staring at it; it’s only going to make you feel worse. I’m going to delete it, okay?”
“Sure, whatever. It won’t matter though, I already memorized the whole thing.”
“Nat.”
“I know. I’m such a masochist. But she called my designs “fugly”! How can I not get offended by that? Plus, she said that my personal style is “completely unoriginal,” that I’m just a “trend follower who doesn’t have one creative bone in her body” and that I wouldn’t know fashion if it “smacked me in the face with a four-inch Louboutin stiletto.” She makes angry air quotes throughout this speech.
“Poor Christian Louboutin. He doesn’t deserve to get sucked into this.”
Nat doesn’t laugh. “Maybe she’s right though. Maybe I do suck. Maybe my designs really are fugly. I’m doomed. I’m a failure. I’ll never amount to anything.”
“Your designs are not fugly, Nat. Plus it’s just one comment. Don’t let it get to you.”
“I’m trying,” she says. “And failing. I don’t know what to do about this,” she indicates the offensive comment on the screen. “I don’t want it to get to me. I try not to let it get to me. But it does. It just does.”
I lean forward to get a closer look at the comment. It was posted by IDoItBetter23 at 3:43am. Clearly, somebody is losing sleep over Nat’s blog and, more than likely, her blog’s popularity. I’d always thought Anonymous Asshole was just an internet troll, a bored, possibly anti-social person who had nothing better to do than trawl random blogs and generally annoy the heck out of others, but now that Natalie has confirmed that this person is from Haven and somebody we may possibly know, I’m not so sure about my original theory.
“Do you still think it’s Matilda?” I ask.
“Yup. It makes perfect sense. She’s always trying to get me to feature her on the blog and I never do it. That’s definitely a reason for her to hate me. And she’s always acting super friendly around us, which I think is just a tactic so we don’t suspect her. But I’m onto her. She’s not gonna fool me anymore.”
“I can’t lie. You make good points.”
“It’s driving me crazy. I feel stupid for letting it bother me, but I really can’t help it. I’m afraid to even check the comments section now, and it’s giving me so much anxiety. This blog used to be an escape for me and now it’s turning into a place that I really want to avoid. I don’t know. I just feel awful.” She drops her face into her hands. I panic, thinking she’s going to start crying, but then she snaps her head back up.
“That’s it!” she says. “I’m gonna disable commenting. That’ll show this coward. Seriously, I should’ve done this years ago.” She clicks on the mouse and I watch as the cursor flies across the screen, hovering over the Personal Settings tab. “Who do they think they are, you know? There. Done.” She crosses her arms and sits back in her chair. “Stupid commenters.”
“Totally stupid.”
“Completely and utterly stupid.”
“So stupid they wouldn’t know a…a…”
“A Louboutin from a Blahnik!” Natalie says.
I point at her. “Exactly.”
She grins wide. “I love you. You’re really cheering me up right now.” She jumps up from her chair and walks over to her closet. “Okay. So. What are we wearing tonight?”
She forages through her closet, tossing things out. I wonder if I should bring up this morning, that jealous look in her eyes, but of course I won’t do that. It seems we’ve made up and bringing that whole thing up now will just make things awkward.
“I might wear a sweater dress. I have this cute black one. I wanna wear it with tights and my combat boots,” I say instead. “You should wear that red sweater dress you have. The off-shoulder one.
“Yeah, but I don’t wanna be too Christmas-y.” She throws some clothes on one of the beanbag chairs and disappears into her closet again.
After another half hour of tossing clothes on the floor, she finally settles on black tights and a slinky slip dress with purple lace trim worn with chunky lace-up ankle boots. She wraps two studded black belts tightly around her waist and loops a silver necklace with a skull charm through the buckles. The skull charm dangles down over her right thigh. She puts on some lip gloss and looks sultry and dangerous with her red lips against her dark skin, and her long black hair falling over her shoulders.
“Wow, you look hot,” I say, looking her up and down. “Like a supermodel.”
“Thanks.” She beams. “Gary, here I come.”
We both laugh.
“So, you’re sure about your sweater dress?” she asks. “You can borrow anything of mine, you know.”
“I know, but I like the dress I have in mind. I’ll take some accessories though.”
“I have just the thing.”
She gives me a brass key necklace with tiny gold flowers circling the top, a few silver and gold bracelets, and a black leather belt to cinch in at the waist. The bracelets jingle at the slightest movement, but I can live with it for the night. I stroke the necklace, feeling the raised embellishments on the key poke into my thumb.
“I like it,” I tell her.
“I know, isn’t it great? It has this sort of gothic femininity to it.”
“Gothic femininity. Right.”
“Looks great on you.”
“Thanks.” I tug at the necklace, sliding the pendant back and forth on the chain. “One more request. Will you contour the hell out of my face?”
Natalie grabs my arm and pulls me toward her vanity, grinning. “I,” she says dramatically, a hand pressed to her chest, “would be honored.”
“I wanna look crazy hot tonight. I think Alex might be there this time.”
“He better be. I can’t believe he bailed on Joanna’s party and the bonfire.”
“His brothers are sick,” I say easily, like I’ve started to believe the lie myself. “He’s helping his mom take care of them.”
“That’s great, but he might get sick himself if they’re that bad. My sisters say they haven’t seen them around all of break.”
“They have the flu,” I say. “They’re in quarantine.”
“I guess that’s for the best.”
She arranges all the products she’ll need for contouring on her vanity and gets to work. “You’re gonna look amazing after I’m done. And trust me, you’re in good hands.”
I’m in good hands, I repeat to myself and close my eyes as she takes a makeup brush and sweeps it lightly across my cheeks, over my nose and along my jaw.
Chapter 21
When we finally arrive at Matilda’s we’re not just fashionably late, we’re late late. We walk in without any fanfare and stand near the door for a moment, surveying the scene. The party is being held in the living room, and all the furniture has been pushed back against the walls, leaving an empty square of space in the middle, which at the moment resembles a sort of No Man’s Land. Like the center of the dance floor at every junior high school dance in the history of junior high school dances, no one dares to be the first to set foot there.
The lights have been dimmed, casting an unnatural yellow glow over everyone, making them look only half-formed. A blend of techno and hip hop blasts so loudly everything seems to vibrate, including my teeth. The nervous anticipation that had begun to build as soon as Nat and I left her house keeps building. I can feel my make-up resting thickly on my face. I imagine I can peel it off if I want to, and a part of me really wants to, but another part of me thinks of it as a veil, so I keep it on. The nervous anticipation, when it started, was maybe the size of a peanut, and now it’s the size of a grapefruit, lodged right between my chest and my stomach. The Grapefruit of Nervousness. I reach over and squeeze Nat’s hand. She squeezes back. I really hope she’s nervous too. With my hand in hers, she pulls me forward and we pass through No Man’s Land quickly, stopping by the refreshments table on the other side of the room. My eyes dart from face to face to face, trying to take it all in at once.
All the usual suspects are here. Marina and Jessica are sitting on the couch with their usual gang of girls, all of them gesturing and practically falling over each other as they try to get a word in. Sometimes I think Nat belongs with their sort more than with David and me, but she’s never shown any interest in hanging out with them, which makes me feel like I’ve won a big, shiny trophy just for being myself. I spot Gary standing with Zack at a dark corner of the room, somewhat isolated from everybody else. I know exactly when Nat sees him too, because she drops my hand and takes a step forward, like she’s about to go to him, but then she stops abruptly and turns to me.
“Gary’s here,” she says breathlessly.
“I know.”
“I feel weird. I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Please don’t aim at me if you do.”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to comfort me.”
“Just breath,” I say. “Everything’s gonna be okay. You’re not gonna throw up.”
She takes a deep breath. “How do I look?”
“Gorgeous.”
“How’s my hair?”
“Perfect.”
“Do I have anything on my face?”
“Just the usual stuff. Nose, eyes, mouth.”
“Anna.”
