me. She’d be fitting a dress or whatever, pinning it at my shoulders or under my pits and getting all bent out of shape because I was slumping.
Suz makes a face and starts for the door. “Wait here.”
While she’s gone I turn off the music and swipe a piece of mint gum from her dresser. I think how weird it is that two people so different wound up friends. I moved to Dallas as a sophomore two years ago when Dad expanded his business. Since then, I’ve been pretty much alone when it comes to a social life. I hate my school with all its little groupies. Until Suz transferred in at the beginning of the year, I didn’t have a best friend. The truth is, I didn’t have any close friends at all. Just kids I hung out with sometimes. Other girls from my orchestra class, usually. Most of them quiet, goody-two-shoes nobodies. Which is probably how people think of me, too. I didn’t share secrets with anyone or talk on the phone ’til late at night. I never laughed so hard I peed my pants. Mainly, I studied a lot, practiced my cello, made the honor roll and spent time with Mom.
Then Suzanna showed up and everything changed. She lives nearby in a Dallas suburb. Suz isn’t exactly honor roll material, but she knows how to have fun. She should’ve graduated last year, but she didn’t pass a couple of classes. Instead of retaking the first semester of her senior year at her old school and being totally humiliated, her parents let her transfer. I still can’t figure out why she chose to hang out with me. At her old school, she was a cheerleader with more friends than she could keep track of. She says they’ve all taken off to different colleges. I’m pretty sure some of them made her feel stupid for not graduating, though she’s never come out and said it.
Some friends.
I think she realized that. Or maybe she’s just had enough of the whole “high school popularity” thing. Whatever the reason, she latched on to me the second she heard me playing cello in an empty classroom one day after school, and she’s never let go. Okay, so sometimes I feel like her ugly stepsister. But at least I have fun now that I’m not hanging with Mom 24/7.
I’m dabbing some of Suz’s spicy perfume on my neck when she walks back into the room and hands me two pale pink oval blobs. “What are these? Dead jellyfish?”
“Silicone inserts,” she says. “They’re Katie’s. She takes after Dad. I take after Mom.”
Katie, Suzanna’s fifteen-year-old sister, is so flat she’s almost concave. “She actually wears these?” I press the blobs against my 32-A’s. The inserts even have nipples. Hard ones.
“Sometimes she does.”
“Well, I can’t,” I say. “I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s false advertising for one thing. For another,” I pinch the nipples, “I’d look like I’m chronically cold.”
Suz snickers.
“Besides, if a guy’s only interested in me because he thinks I have big boobs then maybe he’s not worth knowing.”
She sits beside me. “Let me explain guys to you. They can’t help it. They’re drawn to ta-tas like flies are drawn to picnic tables. It’s the way they’re wired.”
I lay the blobs on the bed beside the red boots. “In that case, I have no hope.”
“Not true. You just have to trick them into noticing you so that they’ll stick around long enough to get to know you better. Once they do, and they realize how funny and smart you are, your booblessness won’t matter so much.”
I stare at her. “Yeah, right.”
Suz sighs. “Okay, maybe not. I’ve never met a guy our age that mature.”
I think of Dad. Mom doesn’t know I figured out about him and the sleazoid who lives next door. But I’m not stupid. I saw how his eyelids got all heavy-looking whenever he saw her out in the driveway wearing only a little bikini top with her short shorts. I heard how his voice changed whenever they spoke, how his deep drawl got deeper and more drawn out, like the words were coated with molasses. “I’m not sure they’re ever that mature,” I say to Suzanna. “Even the old ones.”
Suz sighs. “We’ll have to concentrate on something besides funny and smart then.” She studies me. “You have great eyes. I wish mine were big and brown. And your hair…” She twists it up on top of my head then lets it fall. “I like the color.”
“You have a thing for muddy brown?”
She makes a face. “It’s chestnut.”
“Whatever you say.”
Suz picks up an insert. “Quit being so negative and just have some fun with these, why don’t you?” She tosses it at me. “At least try them on with the clothes.”
Five minutes later, I strut back and forth in front of Suzanna’s full-length mirror laughing like a crazy person. “Hey, dressing like a slut is sort of fun.”
“Ohmigod! You’re so not slutty-looking. I swear! You look like a model. You have to buy some of those thingies to wear all the time. They look real!”
Jumping up and down, I watch them jiggle. I laugh so hard tears run down my cheeks. I admit to Suzanna that I think I might like pretending to be the girl in the mirror for just one night.
“Then let me change clothes and we’ll get out of here,” she says, clapping her hands together.
My stomach twists. I wipe my eyes. “I want to, but I can’t.”
“What now?”
“My mom. She’ll freak if she finds out I went to The Beat.”
“We won’t be drinking. If you’re under twenty-one, they put a band on your wrist so the waiters won’t serve you.”
“I’m not eighteen yet. I can’t get in.”
“My cousin Trevor works there. He’ll be taking cover at the door tonight. He’ll let you through.”
“I don’t know. I could be eighteen and swear not to drink, and Mom still wouldn’t let me go.”
“Come on, Erin. Please? All the college guys go there. When I went with Trevor last weekend on his night off we had a blast.”
“I want to….”
“Then do it! I like your mother, but she’s so strict. You’re not a little girl anymore, and if you don’t stand up to her and make her see that, you’ll never get to have any fun. What does she expect you to do? Sit around with her and your grandmother on weekends? You might as well just skip the next twenty years of your life and go straight to the old folks’ home.”
“I can’t stand up to her. I know my mother. I’ll lose.”
“I think you should try. It’s either that or go behind her back.”
I imagine telling Mom I’m going to The Beat. After she gets over the shock of it she’ll forbid me to leave the house. I imagine saying that she can’t stop me. Then I think of my car, which she bought, the gasoline, which she pays for, the allowance she
