“Things okay at school?”
“They’re fine, Mom.”
“We’re so proud of you.”
“Thank you,” I said. I took my cereal upstairs to my room and ate it sitting at my computer, looking up Kyle’s Facebook page. He was friends with everyone at Darcy, especially all the girls. Not to mention the millions of girls from his old school in Boston who are still posting messages on his wall like every two seconds. And who all have their perfect-looking pictures linked to his page. Kyle’s picture of himself was even better than what you would expect: get this—him, age nine or ten, in soccer shorts and cleats, an absolute afro of silky hair, laughing into the sun and kicking a ball. It was everything a Facebook photo should be, sweet, cute, modest—it suggested the Greek god of a high school boy he was now, but he wasn’t self-loving enough to put even a current photo up, let alone a good one. Whereas most kids post such a great picture of themselves that when you meet them, you’re like, “Wait, I thought you were a supermodel.” And I’m one of those kids. In my picture, I might as well be six feet tall, for all you can tell—smiling in a way that shows no teeth, kind of like a model smirk, all seductive and smart and flirty. I have Meghan’s mom’s “wicked” lipstick on. And the music I list is way cooler than what I actually listen to on a daily basis.
But Kyle’s too genuinely awesome to have to overcompensate on his Facebook page. You could tell from it that he liked kids, was the kind of guy who wanted to have five, and as soon as you saw it, you wanted to have five kids with him. His favorite books were like that too, he put comic books first, showing that he was lighthearted and in touch with his younger self. He liked
Dune
, which I hate—that’s a brown, boring book for boys—just the thought of it makes me thirsty. But he also put, right at the end, as if they were afterthoughts:
Catch-22
and
The Catcher in the Rye
. I made a mental note to bring those up subtly one day and test him. Of course, Ginger Mews and Amanda Fulton and Carrie Shultz and Elizabeth Wood and Stockard Blumenthal were all his friends, along with everyone else who had ever gone to Darcy, which was impressive considering he’d only been there since last year.
I looked at Chris Arpent’s, which was pretty likable too, I have to admit. He liked Chris Ware, that hip cartoonist, and half of his profile pictures were a fat, kind of schlubby cartoon character that Chris Ware draws. In the only one that was actually Chris, he was staring into the sun, with his shadowy eyes looking especially dark and tortured. There were some pictures of him with his mom, who was very pretty, but I didn’t see a dad in any of them. Other people had also tagged a bunch of pictures of him with a baby—his niece or cousin or something. She had cheeks so huge they appeared to be full of food for the winter, and he was laughing and kissing her in one picture. There was something about it that made me catch my breath—maybe the contradiction between the way he looked, all, I don’t know, GI Joe, and the fat baby in her wool hat. It was very appealing. His page said he was “in a relationship,” but didn’t say with who. Maybe Carrie. Her page had a million things that she had written on Chris’s wall, all like, “How are the Colts doing? How’s your mom? Say hi to Alan,” and other stupid shit that was definitely about him and his friends and whatever he was out doing and his interest in sports or whatever. There were barely any responses back from him. I felt bad for her.
Elizabeth Wood’s page, by the way, was the perfect example of what I mean about Kyle’s being so great. Elizabeth lacked his knack for making herself casual—she had a whole gallery of herself “modeling” and even put “modeling” as her “profession.” I mean, come on. At least hers said “single,” so maybe she and Kyle were just friends. Then my cell phone rang and I snapped my laptop shut, like someone could see me looking at Kyle or Elizabeth or something. (734) 201-5580. I didn’t know the number. I paused before picking it up. I know it sounds stupid, but I felt like maybe it was Elizabeth Wood herself. Like, maybe she had heard me stalking her on Facebook, or thinking sarcastic things about her stupid bikini and smooth, long legs. I picked up.
“Um, hi,” said a voice. “Judy?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Sarah, Sarah Taylor.” Goth Sarah.
“Oh, hi.”
“I got your number from the directory.”
“Oh. Okay. So, hey.”
“So, um. I’m not doing anything today, and I was just calling to see if you maybe wanted to come over and hang out.” She didn’t even wait long enough for me to respond before she was like, “If you’re too busy that’s cool—we can do it another time.”
“No, no, I’m free. I’d like to. What time?”
Her voice had lifted. “Whenever? I mean, I’m just hanging out, reading
Gatsby
.”
“Me, too,” I lied.
I hung up and went to ask my mom to drive me over to Sarah’s. I was overjoyed. Even though Sarah was no Ginger, I was almost as grateful as my mom that I didn’t end up spending the entire weekend alone in a pathetic homework bubble or playing Guitar Hero with Sam. My mom drove me over to a two-story on Rock Creek Drive, right off of Geddes, and on the way, I saw a dead dog with its eyes popping out of its head like a cartoon. I don’t even know how I saw the thing so clearly, but I guess my mom had slowed way down for the stop sign at the bottom of Londonderry and Devonshire, and the dog was right there on the corner, which makes sense because it probably was running across the intersection when it got hit. It was a white dog, with so much blood on its fur it had a kind of neon look to it. It must have been dead only a few minutes when we saw it, otherwise all that red would have been black already, the way it looked in the pool on the pavement. My mom, who hadn’t seen it, accelerated out of the stop, turning right onto Devonshire, and I asked, “Why would getting hit by a car make you bleed that much? I mean, doesn’t getting run over just crush your bones or break your neck or something?”
“What are you talking about?” my mom asked.
“Did you not see that gory thing?”
“What gory thing, Judy?” She looked at me, worried.
“Watch the road, Mom!”
“What gory thing are you talking about?”
“Road-kill, Mom. A dog. With a collar and everything. Someone’s dog! I can’t believe you didn’t see it.”
“I’m busy watching the road,” she said. She seemed relieved that it hadn’t been anything actually scary. She signaled to turn right from Hill Street onto Geddes.
“I’m surprised how much blood there was. I mean, don’t small dogs like that only weigh like a few pounds? There were, like, gallons and gallons of blood. An ocean!”
“Maybe it had a head injury. Heads are very vascular.”
When we pulled up at Goth Sarah’s house, her mother was out on the lawn, raking leaves. She looked like a catalogue model, with a red parka on and medium-length sandy blond hair yanked back into a messy ponytail. I wondered if Sarah didn’t dye her hair, whether she’d be blond too. Her mother walked over to the car, her duck boots crunching gravel. She had no makeup on, and a pretty face. Her teeth were all white and straight, lined up in her mouth in an obedient way. I thought of what Sarah had said about her wanting to be an artist. I wondered what kind of art she had wanted to make. I climbed out of the car, feeling inexplicably shy. The rocks in the driveway shifted under my feet, making me think they might become quicksand and swallow me up. I checked my orthopedic shoes; still there. My mom left the car idling, rolled her window down.
“You must be Judy,” Sarah’s mom said, reaching down toward me, her hand in a gardening glove. I thought she was going to shake my hand, and felt a tremor of social awkwardness, but she put her hand on my shoulder instead. She managed to do it impressively naturally. I liked her right away.
“I’m Ann. Sarah’s in the living room—go ahead on in. We’re glad you could come over.” She made her way over to my mom’s window.
“Hi, I’m Ann,” she said again, this time to my mom, peeling off a glove and sticking her bare hand into the window to shake my mom’s. Sarah’s last name was Taylor, so I immediately thought how ridiculous it was that her mom’s name was Ann Taylor. Of course now I know that her mom’s a big feminist and kept her own name, so her last name is Carlton. It’s funny that even though my parents lived in New Mexico once and had their whole hippie era, my mom totally changed her name the day she married my dad. Of course her last name was Haverfinder, so who wouldn’t want to change that? I’m going to keep my name, even if I ever get married. It’s weird to change your own name after having it for a million years. I mean, my parents didn’t even get married until they were like almost thirty. That means my mom was just suddenly someone else, after a whole really long life as Peggy Haverfinder. I think that’s weird.
“I’m Peggy,” my mom said, “Thanks for inviting Judy today.”
“She’s welcome to stay for dinner,” Ann said.
I wandered up a stone path to the front of the house. The living room faced out into the yard, and was walled in glass, so I could see Sarah in there, lying on the couch reading a book. Next to the living room was a screened-in porch, and the rest of the house fanned out in a mess of wood paneling and two-story predictability. I rang the doorbell, watched Sarah swing her long legs off the couch, wondered, as I often do, what it must feel like to live in an ostrich body like that. To stand up and tower over couches and chairs. To be someone else.
She waved through the window before arriving at the door and opening it.
“Come on in,” she said, turning not toward the living room but straight back from the door into the kitchen. “You hungry at all?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I’m hungry,” she said, and I liked her very much for this. I didn’t know if she was or not, but it’s always better to pretend you’re hungry at your own house so that if your guest is hungry she doesn’t have to admit it. She can just eat some of whatever snack you put out “for yourself.” Sarah put some chips in a basket and poured salsa out of a Whole Foods container into an orange pottery bowl. The chips were the healthy kind, Garden of Eatin’, so I figured her parents were like mine and shopped at the co-op and bought that nasty peanut butter with the oil floating on top. But the reason I liked her mom was also that she had brought up dinner right away. It’s funny how if you’re comfortable in someone else’s house, you’re a million times more likely to like the person. Whereas even if you love someone desperately, if you starve or freeze or suffocate when you’re over at their house, you never want to go back. We’re all basically animals, is the thing.
“Come on,” Sarah said, handing me the chips and carrying the salsa. “I’ll show you my room.”
We went down a flight of stairs off the kitchen, into a basement that was quite bright as underground spaces go. There was a couch against the back wall, and a TV facing it, two bookshelves crowded with toys, a sock monkey puppet, and some baby dolls. There was a laundry room to the right, with a door that led out to the backyard, and two bedrooms straight to the back of the basement. The playroom or whatever it was at the bottom of the stairs had a yellow linoleum floor and smelled faintly of mildew but also like lemons and bleach, like something old and damp but that’s just been washed, the way most Midwestern basements do, especially ones with no carpet. Sarah gestured with her shoulder to the one on the left. “That’s my brother Josh’s room,” she said. She turned right and headed into the other bedroom, which was, to my surprise, painted pale yellow. There was a row of narrow horizontal windows along the ceiling of the room, letting a little line of light in. The floor was baby blue and plush. I considered the walls and rug. Maybe she was a big Michigan fan, but I doubted it. Then I saw that there were stenciled animals along the ceiling that broke only for that row of windows: alligator, bear, camel, dolphin, elephant, flamingo, giraffe.
I realized with glee that it was the alphabet. This was just her baby room, like mine, all those suddenly embarrassing little flowers crawling up my curtains and bedspread like squeamish reminders that I’d been an infant mere moments ago. The revolting purple carpet. The white, lacy Chinese lantern. I realized, looking at her baby animal parade and yellow walls, that I had expected Goth Sarah’s room to be pierced and wearing fishnet wallpaper. But being a teenager isn’t gradual, that’s the funny thing. It happens all of a sudden, and your bedroom can’t quite catch up with you immediately.
Underneath the stencils were two punk rock posters and a framed collage of pictures of Sarah and a bunch of other goth girls I’d never seen. Next to it was a poster of Martha Graham dancing, and next to her, Isadora Duncan. Sarah had an open violin case with a shiny violin inside, and two huge bookshelves stuffed with books, many of them horizontal. There were books stacked on her nightstand, and some books open on the desk and others lying on the floor. Except for the scatter of books, her room was mostly neat. There was a bright red Stratocaster next to the bed.
“Wow,” I said. “Can I pick it up?”
“Sure,” she said. “That was my sixteenth-birthday present from my parents.”
“It’s unbelievable.”
“You want to plug it in?”
“That’s okay,” I said, meaning no, not really.
I held on to it, played a few chords. She sat on the bed. I pointed the guitar at Martha and Isadora, thinking it was funny and totally predictable that she’d have them up, rather than posters of someone currently cool.
“You a fan of modern dance?” I asked Sarah.
“I’m a dance major so everyone buys me dance posters when they can’t think what else to get me. I like the Isadora Duncan story,” she said. “Do you know it?”
Everyone liked to talk about our “majors” at Darcy, as if. But Sarah said it sarcastically enough that I thought she had perspective on all that bullshit too.
“What story?”
“She died, you know, when her scarf got caught in the wheel of a convertible she was driving in.”
“No kidding.” I played another chord.
“She was in the car with a hot Italian mechanic. In Italy. The last thing she said was ‘I’m off to love.’ ”
“Who’d she say that to?”