Tales From My Closet (2 page)

Trying not to do something completely and terrifyingly geeky, like drool on myself or trip, I gave her a little wave and, saying, “Well, nice to meet you,” made my way out the door.

When I told Eliza about her, she said, “Yeah, but Becka’s just one kid; they won’t all be like that,” which was freaky, because it was pretty much, word for word, the same thing Mom had said. Versus on the morning of my first day at Western High, when Eliza said (on Skype): “YOU LOOK HOT!” Actually, it was Eliza herself who had suggested the outfit, right down to what color fingernail polish I should wear (a pale aqua blue) and whether or not I should wear matching blue eye shadow. (No. Too much.) The one thing we agreed on, makeup-wise, was lip gloss. My lips look like pale worms without it.

The thing is, when you’re the new kid in school, you have to show up on the first day looking like someone — because if you don’t stake your claim to your
you
ness right off the bat, you’ll not only be a solo-tard for at least several weeks, but also, you’ll be an invisible one. Just another kid wearing a T-shirt and jeans and sandals, going the wrong way in the hallways. I knew I couldn’t compete with Becka, and, like, why would I even try? She and I would never be friends. Even so, meeting Becka had had one positive effect on me: I became more determined than ever not to be one of those kids who fade into the woodwork, just one more Gap-swathed shadow with hair on top and sneakers on the bottom. In short, it was crucial that I establish my own brand. And if the dress I was wearing — as authentic, funky, and utterly original as anything I’d ever owned — didn’t do it, then nothing would.

“Yeah.” I grinned into the computer screen. Good old Eliza: She’d gotten up really early West Coast time to cheer me on. “Thanks to you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But you’re the one who’s pulling it off.”

Which is not at all what Mom said when, a minute later, I came down to breakfast. She didn’t even smile. Instead, she looked at me, bit her upper lip, and said: “You’re not wearing
that
, are you?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I very purposefully, and with as much muscularity as I could muster, rolled my eyes.

Because what I was wearing (thank you, Eliza) could not have been more utterly and astonishingly fabulous. It was: an authentic Scott Paper Caper dress in a black-and-white Mod pattern, cut very simply in the inverted V silhouette and falling to about two inches above my knee. Best yet, it had never been worn before I myself bought it at Treasure Chest Clothing. It was lightweight, it was comfortable, it looked great, and best of all, it was the real deal. How it had survived since 1960-whatever, I have no clue, but there it was, hanging among other brightly colored Mod dresses at Treasure Chest, and the minute I saw it, I had to have it.

Had. To.

And when I pulled it over my head and saw myself reflected in the store’s old-fashioned standing mirror, I knew that it had been waiting for me all those years, as if, instead of me choosing
it
, it had chosen
me
. In it, I not only looked slightly angelic — but in this retro rock-and-roll way, like maybe back in the day I’d dated a rock guitarist — but also astonishingly slim. The white of the white paper set off my reddish hair so that it glowed, and the lightness of the material made me feel that I was incapable of sweating. I figured that even my father, seeing me in it, would have to look up and admire me. Except, of course, that he was out of town on a business trip.

Even so, the dress was a miracle, giving me a deep inner coolosity that I didn’t otherwise have. An alluring but friendly self-confidence. A hip-hop knowingness to my otherwise everyteen stride.

“Let’s go,” Mom said, grabbing her car keys so she could drive me as she does every year on the first day of school. We rode in silence until we were two blocks from school and she said: “You know, my mother had one of those things. It ripped the first time she sat down in it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know that those things can catch on fire, right? That’s why they went out of style. Fire hazard. Look it up if you don’t believe me. By the time I was a teenager it was all peasant blouses and platform shoes and blue jeans.”

“Am aware.”

“Have a great first day of school,” Mom said, lunging over to give me a kiss. “You’ll see. It’s going to turn out great.”

It was the worst day of my life. The. Worst. Day. And trust me, I’ve had plenty of worst days, not to mention plenty of practice being new.

This is how it went:

First period I had English. Everything was going okay until the teacher gave us an in-class assignment to write three paragraphs about any book we’d recently read. “Pen to paper, students,” she said as kids started groaning. “Pen to paper!”

“Hey, what about I use some of this paper right here?” some genius said, poking me in the back with — I guess it was his finger, since my dress didn’t tear.

“Get over it,” the teacher continued. “Because in this class we’re going to have a daily practice of putting your thoughts down on paper.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” the same finger-jutting joker said, this time patting me a little on the back like I was a pony. I turned around. He wasn’t even looking at me, but rather, beaming to the laughter of the class. He had a huge nose and glasses and skin so pale that it looked see-through, but he didn’t seem to know he was anything but the world’s funniest kid.

So. Not. Funny.

Second period I had chemistry, only because I was the only new kid in class, no one chose me to be their chemistry partner, something that I observed from behind as all the popular kids (you could tell by the way they high-fived each other) partnered up. I had to sit there feeling stupid while the teacher
assigned
me a chemistry partner: John, who was the only other kid left unclaimed after the partner-picking session was over. Wonder why. Maybe it was the eyeliner he was wearing? Or his green-and-pink-striped hair? Or his neofascist T-shirt? Or his tattoos? Or perhaps merely the way he was sitting, just behind me, hunched up over a notebook, by turns scribbling furiously and flicking his pen back and forth like a drumstick. I tried not to hold his hyper-funk-nihilist-grunge-gender-blended-macho look against him, but it didn’t help when, preliminaries over, I had to get up to sit next to him at the table he’d already claimed in the far left corner of the room, and he leaned in to say: “Where are you from, anyway — Planet Toilet Paper?”

I tried not to take it personally — after all, he was a guy, as was the finger-jutting jerk from English. Because, and not to put too fine a point on it, as far as I was concerned, in general guys, while occasionally cute, were basically several layers of evolution behind girls. My mom kept telling me that eventually they catch up, but so far I’d seen little evidence of it. “Your father was a teenage boy once upon a time, too,” she’d say, which didn’t exactly boost her argument.

Just when I was figuring that things had to improve, along comes third period — American History — and, just my luck, there was Becka, sitting next to another extremely pretty girl. Both girls sat with their right legs crossed over their lefts, and as I glanced their way I could see Becka give the other girl one of those subtle, fleeting lip curls that can only mean one thing: They’ve already been talking about you. Everything about Becka — from her new, simple white button-down blouse, to her perfect pencil skirt, to her toenails, painted a perfect, soft pink, and her sandals, which were flat and excellent, with silver straps — said that she was better, more
expensive
, and classier than other girls, that she was special, a cut above, headed for the heights. Around her neck hung that same delicate pink-and-gray scarf that she’d been wearing when I met her, which she fingered on and off as if it were a talisman. Becka’s sidekick was more interesting, or at least she was in terms of sartorial sensibility. First off, her long brown hair was plaited into two perfect braids, so long and silky they were like tassels, and as for her outfit, which was so fabulous I glowed with envy, especially as I knew that, with my shape, I’d never be able to pull something like it off, it was:

On top, a silky blouse with lace, like a nightie.

On bottom, cutoff jeans with fraying ends that came to just above her knees.

On her feet, bright-pink All Star high-tops.

Actually, the more I looked, the more I realized that Sidekick’s nightgown-style blouse was in fact a very short nightie, which was something that even Eliza, the queen of creative castoffs, had never tried. But, unlike Eliza, Becka and her PJ-wearing pal were both the kind of high school beauties, tall and elegant as swans, who intimidated grown-ups, so much so that every time the teacher happened to direct his attention toward them, he stretched his neck away from his collar, like he was choking.

Watching him was painful. But otherwise he seemed to know what he was talking about, and the class passed quickly, with nary a snarly comment thrown my way. And then Becka happened. All over again. Lucky me.

“Hey, Um! This is Robin,” she said as I was making my way toward the door at the end of class. Then, turning to Sidekick/Robin, she said: “Um just moved in across the street.”

“Nice to meet you,” the girl said, clearly not meaning it.

“I’m Justine,” I said.

“Can I ask you something?” Sidekick said.

“Sure.”

“What are you wearing?”

I looked down. “A paper dress. It’s an original.”

“I think it got leaked on,” she said.

I looked down to inspect but didn’t see anything.

“In back,” she said. “Like, all over. Unless it’s part of the design?”

“Um’s from San Francisco,” Becka said. “She’s very original.”

“I still don’t see it,” I said.

“It’s all the way in back,” Sidekick said, “just below your shoulders.”

“Maybe you can cover it up with paper towels?” Becka said. “No one would even notice.”

Which is when I felt my face go on fire, and worse, began to sweat, soaking my astonishing dress in blobs of dark stain.

This was so not working out the way I had envisioned it.

So.

Not.

Lunch was next, so I had time to run into the girls’ room, where, craning my neck around, I saw it: splattered from my shoulder to my waistline were blobs of blue ink. It was then that I remembered my chemistry partner flicking his pen back and forth while I sat in front of him, at the next-to-closer-to-the-blackboard table, before the teacher put us together as lab partners. He probably did it on purpose, the jerk. I tried to blot it out, but it only made things worse. Now I really
did
look like I was wearing a giant piece of toilet paper.

I was so upset I nearly cried, but didn’t. For one thing, I don’t cry. For another, there was another girl in the bathroom. Because it’s bad enough to cry, but to cry in front of a total stranger, on the first day of school, in the girls’ room? NEVER. Plus, I recognized her from chemistry class. She was one of the girls in the front row and had instantly gotten teamed up with some big jock with the kind of all-American looks that belong on cereal boxes.

“Hey,” the girl said as she bent to wash her hands in the sink next to mine.

“Hey.”

“Cool dress,” she said.

“It’s paper.”

“It is?”

She herself was wearing shorts and a loose top with sandals. She had straight brown shoulder-length hair, muscular arms, and a figure like a hip-hop star — not thin but not fat, either, which, with her height, she totally pulled off. Also, she had a set of perfect big white teeth, and she was smiling at me with them like she was in a toothpaste commercial. In short, this was a girl who
knew
she was pretty and always had. She was probably dating the captain of the football team. She was probably best friends forever with Becka and Robin, and was already planning on telling them about the new girl with the paper dress.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a paper dress before,” she said, still smiling, but smiling like she didn’t mean it, in a way that let me know she thought I was a loser.