My Best Friend, Maybe Page 13

  I followed Sadie as she started wandering away from the main part of the boardwalk, away from my milk-bottle game.

  I was getting bored with my mom painting Sadie’s face with makeup every night, but I hadn’t complained about that.

  “Want to play a different game?” I asked, even though all the games were behind us now.

  “Maybe later.” Sadie sighed.

  Something was wrong with her or me or us. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking or what she wanted to do, and she obviously couldn’t read my thoughts either because if she could we’d be back at the milk-bottle game, me shooting soft balls and her cheering me on. It was lonely not knowing what she wanted.

  We walked over a few more wooden boards in silence. I followed her gaze to a teenage boy and girl walking toward us hand in hand and I felt the old fear start to gnaw at me. I was afraid Sadie was growing up more quickly than I was. I’d seen her looking at boys so much this week and even earlier in the summer, at the pool. Boys who were with girls—holding hands, kissing, or lying on towels together. I looked at them, too, and registered how happy it seemed to have your hand in someone else’s. But I saved it for later. One day I’d want a boyfriend. One day I’d want to giggle over crushes. But I knew I wasn’t there yet. And if Sadie got boy-crazy without me I didn’t know if I’d be honest and tell her how boring I found that for now, or if I’d change the entire plane of our relationship by faking it until I caught up. We didn’t talk about boys too much, other than Jeremy Price who pulled our hair and whaled snowballs at us so hard they left welts on our cheeks.

  “Let’s go in here,” Sadie said. We were almost at the end of the boardwalk, standing in front of a tiny drugstore. It was quiet and had the usual amount of lights. It didn’t fit in with the screaming and beeping a few yards away.

  I followed my friend into the store and watched her finger bright bottles of nail polish and shiny tubes of lip gloss. I wandered away from her into the candy aisle and contemplated a big bag of Reese’s Pieces. If I wasn’t going to have time to play the milk-bottle game anyway, I should buy them now. But if we were going from here to the game, I didn’t want to waste my money.

  “Coley!” I jumped when I heard Sadie squeal my name from across the store.

  Beside me a woman with a toddler on her hip rolled her eyes at me like she somehow knew to look at me that I was Coley and that Coley was a no-good kid.

  It was exciting to be looked at like that.

  “Coley!” Sadie yelled again.

  I found her in the hair-products aisle, clutching a small white cardboard box to her chest.

  “Coley!” she said when she saw me. “I totally need to buy this. I need it. But it’s nine dollars. Will you lend me your money today and I’ll give you mine tomorrow?”

  I looked at my friend with her pink eyelids and sticky-looking eyelashes and out-of-place lips—she had chewed off most of her gloss at dinner. She was practically vibrating at the possibilities of the box in her hands.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She turned the box around, holding it like an injured bird in the nest of her fingers.

  “Hair dye?” Why were we standing under fluorescent lights discussing hair dye when we could be out in the salty air while I pelted milk bottles with a softball?

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Sadie asked.

  The woman on the cover of the box stood in a background of white. Her hair, blond, cascaded down her back and she stared at us over her shoulder with brown eyes that made you want to crawl into the box and find out what she was like. But the magenta streak down the back of her blond head was the least beautiful thing about her.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “But your mom is never going to let you dye your hair a weird color.”

  “It’s not weird,” Sadie said. “It’s original.” She kept gazing at the box. “Besides, I’d never let my mom do it. She’d totally mess it up.”

  I lowered my eyebrows at her. I was not going to dye her hair behind her mother’s back. Plus, I’d probably screw it up, too.

  “Who will do it, then?”

  “Your mom, silly,” she said, looking at me and giggling. I hoped she couldn’t see the way my cheeks suddenly burned with jealousy or embarrassment or possibly anger.

  “Fat chance. She’d never let me dye my hair. She gets mad about the girls in church who go from brown to blond or blond to black.”

  “She dyes her own hair,” Sadie said. She was looking at the box again.

  Were we about to stand in a store and fight about hair dye during beach week?

  “Just to get rid of the gray,” I said, repeating my mother’s line. “That’s different.”

  “Nope,” Sadie said, not looking at me. She didn’t seem to realize how close we were treading to a fight. “She told me she’s been highlighting her hair since she was sixteen.”

  Wrong.

  Sadie was wrong about that. She had to be. It couldn’t be that Sadie knew more about my own mother than I did. It couldn’t be that she got my mother’s first kiss yesterday morning and that my mom did her makeup before she’d ever done mine and that she told Sadie stuff she hadn’t told me, stuff that was the opposite of everything she had told me. That couldn’t be.

  Sadie was still talking. “And she’s so awesome. She could totally do my hair. Just look at my face. My mom never keeps the eye shadow inside the lines the way your mom can. Your mom is cool. You’re so lucky, Coley.”

  I didn’t want to think about the fact that what my mom shared with me was all about rules and doing what’s right, and all of the cool stuff she apparently knew she chose to share with Sadie instead. And therefore even if my mom was the best and the smartest and the prettiest and all of that, that still didn’t make me lucky.

  “You can borrow my money,” I said. “But there’s no way you’ll be allowed to dye your hair.”

  Sadie gave me a quick hug before she yanked the bill out of my front pocket and then rushed toward the counter.

  Back on the boardwalk I asked, “Why do you want magenta hair anyway?”

  She ripped the little box out of the plastic bag and stared at the woman on the cover so hard I was sure she’d walk right off the planks if I wasn’t there to guide her. “I want to be noticed, you know?” she said finally.

  “Noticed?” I said. I didn’t know. What did that even mean?

  “Yeah, you know. I want to make a splash. I want to be so obviously Sadie.”

  I giggled. “Who else would you be?”

  She smiled back but she didn’t say anything. She kept staring at the box.

  “You mean noticed, like, boys and stuff?”

  Now she looked at me, considering the question.

  “Yeah, I guess. Boys, girls, adults. What ever. Everyone.”

  I tried to hold in my relief that this wasn’t some boy-crazy fascination budding.

  “You mean like a movie star?”

  She stopped walking and grabbed my upper arms to spin me around. “Ooh! Coley! Like a movie star! Can you imagine?”

  Now we were both giggling and it felt good. She started strutting back and forth in front of me.

  “Now on the red carpet,” she said in her thick announcer voice, “Sadie Pepper. Bang! flash! go the cameras. No one can get enough of me.” She struck several poses ahead of me on the boardwalk. The lights of the games in the distance glowed behind her and she suddenly looked beautiful and almost grown. But I laughed because she was still silly and I knew she always would be.

  She stuck out a hip and jammed her fist into it. “Can’t you see it, Coley? Wouldn’t it be great?”

  I nodded. It wouldn’t be my dream, but I could see Sadie loving the red carpet.

  “So this is your first step to stardom? Magenta hair dye?”

  “Yup.” Sadie clutched the box. “Just you wait. As soon as this sucker is in my hair the TV people and cameras are going to show up and I’ll get magazine gigs and parts in movies. Just you wait. Till tomorrow.”
r />   We laughed and walked so close together our elbows touched.

  “And what happens to your best friend when you’re rich and famous?”

  Sadie slung her arm around my neck. “You’ll be right next to me on the red carpet. And everywhere. Always. Right?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Right.”

  Somehow that last part of her dream became the least true.

  Sadie bursts in the front door of my cave with the first rays of the sun.

  “Dude!” she says, way too loudly. “You left your door unlocked all night.”

  I roll onto my back and groan. My hair is twisted all around my upper body. My brain throbs in a techno-beat rhythm between the bones of my skull. My mouth tastes like I’ve been sucking on cotton.

  “It’s safe here,” I croak.

  But it’s weird I didn’t lock my door.

  The wine made me forget, and I’m so glad my mother will never have to know about that.

  Sadie sits on the edge of my bed and hands me a bottle of water. It feels good even resting in my palm, like the condensation can rehydrate me through my skin cells. I scoot up on the bed and lean against the back wall. Only one drink a night from now on.

  “Drink,” she says.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Nine,” she says.

  I drink and she watches. Why is she here? We don’t have to be ready for this catamaran-ride thingy until one.

  “Look, I’m sorry about yesterday,” she says. And because I’m still too fuzzy to shrug it off, to nod seriously, to do anything that Perfect and Reasonable Colette would usually do, I say, “Ha!”

  “I am. I’m sorry,” Sadie repeats. “We’re supposed to be acting like we didn’t . . .” She pauses.

  I freeze. How will she say it?

  “Take a break,” she concludes.

  I roll my eyes.

  “But it’s hard. And Rose—”

  I cut her off. “Why did you need a break from me?”

  Her eyes go wide. “I didn’t,” she says. “I didn’t need a break from you.” She stands up and shoots one of those smiles at me, throwing the purple part of her hair over her shoulder. Then she grabs all the blankets and whips them to my feet. “This is boring. Let’s go shopping.”

  The next thing I know we’re showered and dressed and on the white-marble sidewalk. We’re licking cones of gelato, our breakfast. We’re having fun again. This trip is a seesaw between fun and awkward, fun and embarrassing, fun and terrifying. I know what my mom would say—fun is dangerous. But I don’t want her to be right.

  I’ll be Fun Colette for now, like Louisa said.

  We go into one of the more organized-looking stores in the maze of souvenir and clothing and art shops along the marble pathway. I pause at a display of magnets made of lava, thinking about a surfboard one for Adam, the owl for Peter. The wad of cash that my dad shoved into my hand feels like a hot coal in the pocket of my jean shorts, a burning lump pushing against my hip, and I know I shouldn’t spend it, not even on my brothers.

  Sadie appears beside me, her gelato gone and her limbs dripping with hangers bearing various Greek clothes.

  “Come on!” she says. “They have dressing rooms in the back!”

  She hands me a stack of hangers and disappears behind one of the two curtained-off changing areas. Looking at the clothes, I’m not sure if we’re playing dress-up or shopping for real.

  When I’m standing in the dressing room in just my white bra and jean shorts, I call, “Which should I try on first?”

  “The one on the bottom,” Sadie answers.

  I pull out the bottom hanger and there it is. Bright pink and purple stripes broken up by an occasional line of brown. Shiny and precise, like it knows exactly how big it needs to be and where it needs to fall. Brown strings dangle in every direction, and I wonder how I didn’t know there would be a bikini on one of these hangers.

  I shouldn’t put it on. Not even to see what I would look like on this boat today if I were a normal girl. I remember Mom’s e-mail about temptation from yesterday.

  I reach out and touch it and I’m surprised at the smooth surface against my fingers, the netting against my thumb. It feels like my racing suit.

  “Ready?” Sadie calls.

  “Almost,” I say. I wiggle out of my shorts and my bra. I’ll see what it looks like. I won’t listen to my mom’s international guilt trips anymore.

  I yank the four strips of fabric onto my body quickly, before I can change my mind. When I look in the mirror, I can tell it should look good. I can see how the random brown stripes highlight my eyes, how the bright pink stands out against my tanned skin. But something isn’t right. It’s askew. It’s more revealing than it means to be. I pull on the top corner of one of the triangles and my chest shakes. I pull on the other one and it reveals a little plop of white at the bottom of my breast. I quickly tug the top down again.

  “Ready?” Sadie repeats.

  I hesitate. But we’re supposed to be acting like we’re best friends. “Would you come in here?”

  She slips behind my curtain and even though she’s wearing the same suit as me, I see her eyes go wide in the mirror. “Colette! It was made for you!”

  I turn to look at her. “Something’s not . . . right.”

  She glances at my chest, then looks at my feet. She says, “You tied it too tight. Untie it at the top, then spread the bottom as far as it can go along the bottom strings. Then retie the top as tight as you can without bunching the bottom together.”

  She’s gone before I can ask her to do it for me.

  I do what she says and then . . . I can’t help smiling. I know this is a prideful smile, an immodest smile, a just-plain-wrong smile, but I smile.

  Oh, my gosh, am I actually thinking about wearing this? About spending Dad’s money on a skimpy bikini?

  “What do you think?” Sadie asks.

  This time I open the curtain.

  “You look amazing, Coley,” she says. “You have to wear that today.”

  Can I wear this in front of Sadie’s family? In front of Sam? I feel my face start to flush.

  “Coley!” Sadie says, all eager and smiley. As usual her enthusiasm is catching. “Wear it!”

  “I’ll buy it,” I say. “We’ll see.”

  I tune out my guilt as I hand over the money. It’s only fifteen euro, about twenty-two dollars. Dad probably won’t ask what I did with twenty-two dollars. That could have easily gone to lunch or dinner or something. And Mom . . . does she even know Dad gave me a handful of cash? Either way, she’ll know I did something wrong. So I might as well enjoy it.

  If it even is sinful to think you look good in a bikini.

  “We should head back and get ready,” Sadie says as we leave the store. “Promise me you’ll wear it.”

  I stop and face her on the sidewalk. “Do you promise you’ll be nicer? Even when Rose is around?”

  My words startle her and, for that moment, they startle me, too.

  “I promise.” She nods, biting her lip. “I promise I’ll be nicer today no matter what you wear. But you look so good in that suit, I think you should wear it.”

  Ω

  Back in the cave I stand naked in the bathroom in front of the mirror, looking for the difference between nude and bikinied. Somehow a few square inches of brightly colored fabric do make a difference in terms of decency.

  I step into my black suit and wiggle it onto my body. The straps snap on my shoulders. The fabric clings to my skin, gluing it all close to my bones. My breasts look like pancakes encased in black Lycra. My butt is high and flat and totally visible. It’s actually not modest, this suit. It’s tight, so tight the skin next to my straps and under my arms has to puff out to accommodate it. It’s completely immodest, I realize. It just doesn’t seem that way because it’s not flattering.

  I hold the top of the bikini against the chest of my suit. Which thing should I wear? Which girl should I be today?

  My watch
says it’s twelve forty-five. I have fifteen minutes to make up my mind and join the rest of the wedding party in the dusty parking lot.

  How did this become such a big deal?

  Before I know it, I’ve dropped my suit top and walked across my cave, my phone in my hand, dialed and ringing.

  “Little lady!” Dad answers, hushed. I realize it’s five forty-five a.m. at home. I imagine him sneaking his ringing cell phone out of the bedroom to take my call in a whisper. He must have sprinted out of there in order to answer as quickly as he did. Was a vacation worth tearing my family apart? Something else I’m not going to think about.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “Dad?” I say quickly, guilty. “Can you not tell Mom it’s me?”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “She’s not . . . she didn’t hear the phone.”

  That’s weird. But I don’t have time to ask.

  “What’s up?” he says.

  “Okay, remember when you told me to remember everything I know and be myself?”

  “Yeah.” His whisper sounds worried.

  “Well, I kind of hate when people say that.”

  “Oh?” he says. I half expect him to reprimand me like Mom would, but instead he answers like he wants to hear what else I have to say.

  “It’s the kind of thing that sounds so easy, just be yourself. Obvious. Like, you don’t really have another choice but to be yourself.”

  “Yeah?” Dad says.

  “But, sometimes I don’t know who that is, really.”

  My mother would call this preposterous. My mother would say I’m exactly who God made me to be. That everything about me is made with a purpose.

  My dad doesn’t.

  “Me either,” he agrees, heavily.

  I don’t have time to wonder what he’s thinking or what’s not easy on his end or if he just gets it, so I keep talking. “So, tell me what you meant. Should I really be myself, as is and without thinking about it, you know? Or should I be myself like the self you and Mom want me to be? Or . . .” I trail off.

  Dad says, “Uh-huh?”

  So I keep talking. “Or should I be the other one . . . the self I want me to be?”