Making Pretty (4 page)

I laugh. More or less. It's mostly a snorting cough of embarrassment and surprise, but I'm smiling, so it vaguely resembles a laugh. He has an accent I can't quite place except that I assume it means he's lived in New York his whole life and probably has a parent or two who speaks Spanish.

Bernardo sort of salutes his friends across the path and shakes hands with Arizona and Roxanne. They introduce themselves, and he raises his eyebrows at Arizona's name.

“Arizona and Montana,” he says. “This a joke?”

“Sisters,” I say. I touch Arizona's elbow on the word and want to exchange a smile with her, give one of those we-love-being-sisters looks, but she's not having it. She is too busy wrinkling her nose and adjusting the straps of her tank top and probably planning her escape route.

“Our mom was a hippie. So our dad was briefly a hippie too. He's
like that,” Arizona says. For someone who doesn't want to talk, she's saying way too much.

“And now?” Bernardo says, which is sort of the million-dollar question, to be honest.

“Our dad sort of dates a lot. And sort of changes a lot when he dates. But he's a good guy,” I say. There's a break in conversation where I'm supposed to say what's up with my mom too, but I don't.

“We don't really have a mom,” Arizona says for me.

“We're over it,” I say, and it feels true.

“You don't look too much like sisters,” Bernardo says. It's the first time anyone's ever said that, and it aches. Until right now, everyone's always been able to guess. We've had the same dark-blond hair and blue eyes and wide hips and flat chests our whole lives. We've had matching pale skin and T-shirt collections and side ponytails. “I mean, I can see it now that I know,” he says. “But at first glance I'd have no idea.”

I look at her. I've been avoiding taking her in. She doesn't even look like a New Yorker anymore, let alone like a family member. My throat closes up, recognizing the sudden distance between us. If we were walking down the street, no one would think we were sisters. It's the huge kind of loss that is impossible to swallow all at once, so I look away again.

“They're like twins!” Roxanne says, because she hasn't looked at Arizona yet either.

“Arizona's older,” I say. “She's in college.” It is a useless sentence that explains nothing.

It's weird, how a new set of breasts can feel like a betrayal. It sounds stupid and I know I can never say it out loud.

“We have the same eyes. And nose,” Arizona says. I want to gauge what amount of pain she's feeling. I hope it measures up.

Bernardo looks at Arizona's face, then mine, twisting his head all around to see every angle, looking for similarities. He shrugs, like it doesn't really matter.

“Yeah, no, I see it.”

Arizona grins, thinking he's really seen our sisterliness at last, but I can tell he hasn't. He doesn't. He won't. It's gone.

We pick up hair dye at the Duane Reade on the way to my place and after we squeeze, all four of us, into our bathroom.

“It should be pretty bright for, like, six weeks,” Roxanne says. “Then it's gonna sort of fade over time. Especially in the sun. Okay?” She's an expert. Today her hair is brown with purple stripes, but who knows what it will be next week. She's been growing it long, so it hangs heavy and thick past her shoulders, a certain kind of beautiful that I think she doesn't get enough credit for.

Roxanne is always this person for Arizona and me—creating magic where there was nothing, manufacturing ease where there was tension. On our last day together last summer she dragged us to Coney Island to sit on the beach in bikinis and eat Nathan's hot dogs. They were good. We forgot to be sad about the fact they were leaving. After their graduation, the one I skipped, we painted stars and hearts on our cheeks with face paint and played our recorders in Washington Square Park. We made ten dollars and bought pizza.

“Six weeks of pink hair, huh?” Bernardo says. He doesn't seem nervous. But he doesn't seem exactly happy either. He shrugs. Gets a look on his face like he's doing the math on how many days six weeks means. I get a wave of loneliness at how little I actually know about him. How unfamiliar and unpredictable his moods are to me. He looks my way with raised eyebrows and shining eyes. “Can we handle that? That's some serious commitment. You've gotta hang out with me for at least as long as I have this crazy hair.”

“Six weeks is a long time, dude,” I say while Arizona washes her hands in the sink and Roxanne runs out to the kitchen to find some rubber gloves. “You might hate me. Then you'll have pink hair and nowhere to sit in the park and some serious disappointment.”

“I thought this was all about being some über-individual,” Arizona says. “Maybe this dude should go with a different color. Or shave it all off instead.” It's like she's joking but she's not.

“My name's Bernardo,” he says. He sounds nice but firm.

I give Arizona a pleading look. She knows how long I've had my eye on him and how few guys I've ever had my eye on.

Bernardo shrugs again. I guess it's a thing he does. I take note. When my dad meets someone and “falls in love” and marries her, he doesn't know anything about her. Except for the way she makes him feel and how pretty she is and how pretty she will turn out to be. How pretty he will make her.

Our apartment, decorated by years of wives and girlfriends, is something I have chronicled extensively in my head. I know which toothbrush holder, throw blanket, overpriced vase, chaise lounge
is from which wife. It's obvious, the objects perfectly matching up alongside their personalities.

Dad has no idea.

He could easily confuse a Natasha couch with a Mom one, or a Tess piece of art with Janie's taste. As if he never knew them at all.

I'm not my father. I notice the drawings on Bernardo's sneakers, little stick figures near the soles, etched into rubber that used to be white but is now gray from the grimy New York streets. I want to notice everything about him, and like him because of it. I don't want to extract or shift or mold. I don't want to love the way my father loves.

Bernardo is a guy who shrugs and doesn't smile all the time and draws stick figures on his shoes and likes crazy adventures with strange girls. Bernardo is unafraid.

I'll look up the band on his shirt later. I'll listen to no fewer than five songs. I will learn something about him from the lyrics and the rhythm and whether the guitars are loud and electric or cooing and acoustic.

“Montana has to do the honors,” Roxanne says when she's back in the bathroom. With all four of us in the tiny space, we can barely move. Bernardo sits on the closed toilet and Arizona perches on the ancient standing tub. Roxanne slips rubber gloves over my hands and holds her nose while showing me how to do the bleach and then the dye.

I can't feel the texture of his hair through the gloves, but it's intimate anyway, pulling at the strands, covering them in thick paste,
making sure I haven't missed a spot.

“Too late to change my mind?” he says halfway through.

“This is the weirdest day of my life,” Arizona says.

“That's A, not true and B, really sad if it is true,” Roxanne says.

Standing over Bernardo feels right. And when he winces from the way the cheap dye burns his scalp, I laugh instead of apologize, and that feels right too. “I have a good feeling about this,” I say.

“Me too,” Bernardo says. I don't think he's talking about the hair.

“You smoke?” I say as we wait to wash the dye out of Bernardo's hair. We haven't moved from the cramped bathroom, although I can't really say why. It smells like the kind of chemicals that will kill you, and it's deathly hot. Arizona has shifted from the edge of the tub into the tub itself, where she can stretch her legs out and lean back. Her shoes are off. Her hair's in a high, frizzy ponytail. If it weren't for the French manicure and khaki shorts and C cups and pink polo, she could be my old sister. I wonder if Bernardo sees it now too. If the fact of our being sisters has clicked into place as soon as Arizona chilled a little.

I wonder if this side of her came out in hostels in Austria and France last week. I don't think the dorms at Colby even have bathtubs.

Arizona asks for a cigarette too, but she hates smoking. Used to hate smoking. I should know exactly how she feels about smoking these days, but I don't.

“I could smoke,” Bernardo says. “I don't really do it, but it's one of those days, I guess, right?”

Bernardo is a guy who doesn't smoke but sometimes smokes.

Bernardo is a guy who starts to look tired when he has been adventurous and free-spirited for over two hours. His eyelids look heavier and his voice has a new grumble in it, on the edges.

I grin at him and he half smiles back.

Bernardo is a guy who never grins.

“On it,” Roxanne says. She has a pack in her purse; she picked them up with the hair dye because she knows how to have the best possible afternoon. We each light a cigarette and I open the window wide so that the four of us can gather around it and blow smoke out onto West 12th Street. Arizona gives up after half a cig, so I stand in between Roxanne and Bernardo and thrill at Bernardo's shoulder against mine and how quickly I've mastered the art of casual smoking. I still hate the taste, but right now I'm enjoying the shape my lips make when I exhale and the grace of bringing my fingers to my mouth. It's like a ballet move.

“Dad's gonna kill you, he's gonna smell it all over you,” Arizona says. She coughs but doesn't leave.

“Dad's gonna kill me anyway,” I say. I shake my almost pink hair in her general direction and take another puff. “Besides, his new girlfriend smokes.” I know this is true because when he's been out with her, he comes back with the smell of someone else's cigarettes clinging to his blazer.

“Sounds like none of us are going to make it out of today unscathed,” Bernardo says, a little more gravel in his voice.

Bernardo is a guy who says funny things but doesn't know they're
funny. Bernardo is a guy who doesn't laugh but watches me when I laugh.

I really like a guy named Bernardo
, I text Karissa even though she hasn't replied to my first text and I'm paranoid that we didn't actually bond like I thought we did.
I didn't think Bernardos could be hot
.

Is there anything better than liking someone you never thought you could like?
Karissa says, and it's perfect and I'm left wondering why I can't say these things to my sister anymore.

Bernardo's hair ends up being way brighter than mine. My dirty blond is still partially visible under the veil of color. Bernardo's hair, on the other hand, is a brilliant, deep pink, since we stripped it of all color before re-creating him. He is all neon insanity. Mine is a brown-blond-pink-beachy-messy color, but his is a statement.

“Yes,” I say, in answer to nothing, because there's no other word for how it feels to look at him.

He doesn't cry or anything, looking at himself in the mirror. He doesn't gasp. He doesn't blush.

“Well, here we go,” he says.

A couple of days later, getting a bagel, I'm on high Bernardo alert. It's summer in the way it's only ever summer in New York for about three days a year, so everyone's in the park. I slow to a stroll and hope he appears. I'm expecting him and his buddies, draping themselves over their bench. One of the guys always has a harmonica. The other talks so loudly that people walking by get uncomfortable. So they'd be hard to miss if they were here. I could text and ask him if he's in the park.

I have Bernardo's number, but he doesn't have mine.

“I dyed my hair pink,” he said before he left my place. “So you know where I stand. Text me when you want, okay?”

I haven't texted yet. Karissa said to wait a few days, but I don't think my fingers will let me hold out much longer.

I start up at a normal gait again and think about words I could text him. I come up with
hi
and pretty much short out after that. I could ask him how his hair's holding up. Or if he's liking the weather. I make a pact with myself to say something by the end of the day.

Preferably something not about the weather, because I'm not fifty and I'm not boring.

When I'm past the benches, on the far side of the park near the arch, I see a flash of neon pink.

It's him.

He's far enough away that he won't be able to see me, especially since my hair isn't so spectacular. I don't stand out like him.

I don't call out. I watch him from here.

He's running. In circles. Like a pink dog. His striped scarf flies out behind him, and man, Arizona would hate that he's wearing a scarf on such a warm day.

Then there's what he's running from: little kids. Little Bernardo look-alikes, two boys and two girls who I assume are his siblings. They scramble and kick up grass and cigarette butts and pant behind him. They screech and swat at his torso.

When Janie lived with us, she brought her two tiny sons, Frank and Andy. Arizona and I taught them to play Chutes and Ladders and how to speak in pig Latin. Bernardo's family looks like that but better. More real. Something that lasts.

Whatever Arizona and I get never lasts. We have it for a few years and then are asked to adjust to something else. And at the end of the day, even Arizona and I didn't last. Not the way I thought we would.

There's a woman with dark hair and a kind smile watching. His mother, I'm sure. I almost can't bear the sweetness. She has probably never gone anywhere, never changed anything. Her shirt looks like it is from ten years ago. Her haircut too.

I wonder what it would be like to have the same family your whole life. Or to even have one person who is always yours. Always close and connected and familiar.

Today Arizona is going to something called Pure Barre class with a girl named Esther, and afterward they're going to make dinner together. Every bit of that sentence sounds strange and imaginary. We've never made dinner together. We order dinner. The only things we make are sandwiches.

I'd assumed Bernardo was like me—lost and from something off and unsettled.

I don't send a text. I don't linger to watch the whole perfect family summer scene or wonder whether he's already regretting his hair. It's obvious, when he pulls a ski hat out of his pocket and puts it on, that he is. It's June, after all. And he already has a scarf on. Weirdo.

I try Natasha, because a few hours with her makes me feel like I'm not as messed up as I feel when I'm at our apartment with Dad and all the things his ex-wives left behind. She doesn't answer. She's out with her real family and I'm not part of it, no matter what she says, no matter how vehemently she insists I am always going to be her stepdaughter.

No one wants to always be a stepdaughter.

Roxanne is with her parents for the day, so that leaves Karissa. I probably should have started with Karissa.

She gets back to me right away and tells me to meet her for pickles and wine at her place.

I run home to change at my apartment, and by the time I'm ready to head over to hers, my hair's in knots, pink and blond wrestling in and out of lazy curls. I throw on blue leggings and a black T-shirt and enough deodorant to not have to shower. I wonder what Karissa will think of the new look.

Before I get to Karissa's place, I give in and text Bernardo.

I'm texting you. So you know where I stand too
. ☺

Karissa's all over me when I get to her place. A few drug-skinny friends are sitting on her big pink couches, and there are bottles of wine open on every spare surface. I try to look more like twenty and less like seventeen, and I don't know if the hair is helping or hurting. I try not to care.

“Look what you've done! You are hands down the coolest, least bullshit person I've ever met in my life.” Her hands go to my hair, twisting and pulling the strands. Her own hair is in messy waves that crash all the way down her back, practically to her butt.

“I call it summer pink,” I say, which I only came up with this very moment. Five too-cool twentysomethings make noises that sound almost like laughter.

“If I could get cast in commercials with summer-pink hair, I'd absolutely join you,” she says. “But I don't have the face to pull that off. Or the skin. Man, if I looked like you, my agent would like me about a billion times more.” She has this list of things she hates about herself and that agents and casting directors supposedly hate about her. It would sound negative and bitter coming out of my mouth,
but Karissa makes insecurity look almost appealing. Open and comfortable and raw. “I look like ass today, compared to you,” she goes on. “You need to stop showing me up.” Karissa is approximately the greatest person I've ever met. It would be impossible to show her up. She pours me a plastic cup of wine. “This is Montana!” she announces to the room. I expect bored nods or total shunning, but with the mention of my name, they all brighten a little. Two of them actually smile.

“Montana!” a girl with short dark hair says. She gets up and shakes my hand. She looks from me to Karissa and back again. “It is so nice to meet you finally.”

“Yep. At long last,” I say like it's all a joke.

“They're being weird,” Karissa says. “Don't be weird, guys. Montana is my friend. From that acting class I did. She's an old soul.” She overemphasizes the word
friend
, like they might think I'm something else, but I don't know what that something else might be, so I'm sweating with nerves.

“Oh, okay. I see. Right,” a guy with shaggy blond hair says. “She drinks?”

“I drink,” I say, and Karissa smiles. “I smoke too.” Karissa freaking beams. I'm as cool as she'd told them I would be.

I pour a little more into my cup and wonder at a world where Karissa is bragging to her friends about me.

“These people are, like, my created family. Taking care of me ever since mine died,” Karissa says. I'm not used to people speaking at full volume about things like death, so my heart leaps a little at its mention.

“That's awesome. I'm so sorry about your family, by the way. I
don't know if I got that across the other night. But I'm so, so sorry,” I say. I hope it's right. Her pain makes me feel a little panicked. Like I'm supposed to help but I have no idea how.

“Lady, I don't even remember the end of the night, honestly. Which is the best, right? When it, like, fades? Little bits and pieces bubble up, but most of it exists in some, like, twilight zone?”

“You make blackout drunk sound beautiful,” I say, even though I've never actually been blackout drunk.

“I have a secret,” Karissa says. She has three pickles and a glass of wine in her hand, and the smell is odd and perfect. I'm used to women who all look the same and smell the same and eat the same sad foods—nuts and berries and lean meats and so much spinach I sometimes wonder if it's a requirement of being my dad's wife. Karissa is someone else. She doesn't remind me of anything or anyone.

I think I could be unusual like her. An original.

I steal one of the pickles from her and dig in like we do this all the time—share food and drinks and moments. And secrets.

“I bet you have a million secrets,” I say. Karissa laughs and gives me a little shove.

“You're too cool for us,” she says. Obviously the exact opposite is true, but I shrug like I totally know, and throw my summer-pink hair back over my shoulders and sip wine and for that second I am the girl she says I am.

But when I look at Karissa, I know I'm not in her league. Not even close. She's wearing a white dress that I'm pretty sure is actually lingerie and a strand of pearls that I'm pretty sure are plastic and a big pink
shawl that I'm positive only she could pull off. Patches of freckles cluster around all the best parts of her: her nose and cheeks, her shoulders, her knees and thighs, the back of her neck, hidden except for when she occasionally pulls her mess of hair into a ropy ponytail.

We're so close we're touching. My phone buzzes and I almost don't check it, but even with Karissa next to me, I still want it to be Bernardo. I wasn't expecting that. I thought she was big and bright enough to eclipse him completely.

I sneak a peek. It's him. Asking when he can see me next. Saying he was excited to hear from me. I have a surge of adoration for both Bernardo and Roxanne. I try to keep it under wraps, but the smiling happens without me being able to control it. Too big and too sloppy.

I'm all kinds of fluttery.

I text back that he'll see me soon.

“Looks like you've got a secret too,” Karissa says.

Then we're stupidly grinning at each other, and I think maybe we really are going to be mismatched best friends.

“Enough about me, you're the one wanting to share secrets,” I say. “So spill.”

“I can't tell you yet,” Karissa says. “It's good. I think it's good. I want you to think it's good. Promise you'll try to think it's good?” She's the kind of person who wants you to promise the impossible without asking any questions.

And when I'm around her, I'm the kind of person who makes promises I can't keep.

“I promise,” I say.

We split a cigarette on the sidewalk outside Karissa's building. The girl with the short black hair and her date, who has a ridiculous hat and an even more ridiculous beard, come down too. I work on fitting in with them.

“Could you guys, like, get arrested for this?” I say. I'm too drunk now to pretend to be old enough to be doing any of this.

“Whatever, no, who cares,” the girl with black hair says, which isn't an answer at all.

“You're not thirteen, are you?” her friend says.

“She's practically an adult,” Karissa says. “We don't need to baby her. She's a whole person.” She nods very seriously, and I want to tell Bernardo about it. I want him to know there's a beautiful mysterious perfect weirdo probably soon-to-be-famous actress who thinks I'm Real.

“She's right. I barely even have parents.” It's not the kind of thing I'd say if I weren't pretty fuzzy on the Manhattan sidewalk.

“Not true, you have a dad,” Karissa says. She winks. It's something she used to overuse in acting class. Her one flaw as an actress. Which makes her even more perfect, having a funny little flaw.

“My dad's a mess,” I explain to her friend who isn't asking questions, because I am oversharing to an insane degree and probably she wants me to stop, but I won't. “He's been married four times. And, like, a thousand girlfriends in between. And he thinks we should all get nose jobs and tummy tucks the second we turn eighteen, you
know? Like, not because he's evil but he actually thinks that's the key to womanhood happiness or something.”

“I didn't know all that,” the friend says, like she didn't just meet me two hours ago.

“It's a wonder I turned out so cool, trust me,” I say. “My sister Arizona almost became cool too, but she changed her mind while she was at college and decided to be not cool instead.”

“Your dad must be pretty hot, with all these ladies all over him,” Karissa says, winking again. I hit her arm and she giggles like I'm tickling her and it's all very Montana Has Arrived.

There's a long pause. Pauses on New York sidewalks aren't quiet, exactly, because they are full of cars honking and strangers talking as they walk by and other people's television sets. But in some ways the noise makes it even quieter.

“What's that thing they say in Greek myths or whatever? About truth in wine?” I say. I shouldn't drink during the day. I shouldn't drink at all, probably. I don't know how to do it right. I keep ending up like this: too open and vertigo-ed and rubbing my eyes to regain my balance. None of that magical in-between that Karissa talked about.

“You can tell us anything,” Karissa says. “That's how we do it, at wine and pickles parties.” She giggles again and her friend laughs too, and I feel like I'm getting inducted into something wonderful and cozy. Like a cult but good.

“Don't feel bad for me or anything. I'll probably have a new mom soon, anyway!” I say, and Karissa's eyebrows spike. “I mean, not really. That'd be fast even for him. But he sounds all smitten. And this
one's
different
.” I scoff so they know exactly how seriously I take that description.

“Sounds like love to me,” Karissa says. “Maybe this one really is different.” She almost sings it, and I wonder when she was last in love. Probably constantly or never at all. However she does love is how I should do it. Cool and calm or crazy and fearless. She has a necklace with a metal heart hanging from her neck, and I decide it's enough evidence that Karissa knows things about romance that I need to learn. Things my dad or my mostly gone mother or my uninspiring ex-sort-of boyfriends can't teach me. “Do you want him to be in love?” she asks. And the answer is somewhere deep down far away inside me.