Making Pretty Read online

  “I’m good with things the way they are right now,” I say. It’s not a lie. I prefer things the way they’ve been since Tess left to the way they’ll be if he’s dating someone new. I like making my dad coffee in the mornings and going to Reggio with him on weekday nights. Splitting prosciutto sandwiches and the world’s best lattes. Listening in on old men and first dates and disgruntled waitstaff. I like that he tells me about his day, instead of telling whatever wife is waiting for him at the kitchen counter. I like knowing the nurses’ names and how many procedures he’s done and what the worst part of paperwork is.

  If I was not full-on wasted, I’d tell him.

  But I am full-on wasted.

  The kitchen twists and turns, checkerboard tiles shifting around on top of one another and making me motion sick.

  “I thought you were taking time off from dating,” Arizona says. Her arms are back over her chest and her face is contorting to stop itself from crying.

  I can’t stop moving my head from side to side. It won’t stay up all the way, and it feels good to let it give in to its own weight. I’m trying to catch the conversation in my mind, but it keeps slipping through the cracks the champagne caused. I can’t quite keep it straight.

  “What’s this now?” I say. Arizona sighs and Dad pours me more water.

  “It’s different this time,” Dad says before I fall asleep on the kitchen floor. The words are like a fairy tale—something I’ve heard over and over, so many times, that it can lull me to sleep.

  When I wake up in the morning, I’m at the bottom end of my bed and I have lines all over my face from sleeping so hard and for so long on a textured blanket I keep there.

  I don’t remember how I got here, but I remember enough of the night to know Dad has a new girlfriend and Arizona has a new body and Roxanne has a new life and I only really have Karissa to keep me sane and happy.

  I wake up with this ache I get sometimes after I think about my stepmothers too much. It’s like missing them, but it hurts more because I also sort of hate them. Nostalgia meets rage. The kind of combination that can make you throw up, like orange juice and milk mixed together. All wrong.

  Roxanne texts that she’s on her way over, and I tell her what to bring. Coffee. Cigarettes. Hair dye.

  June 3

  The List of Things to Be Grateful For

  1The rubber-stamped poodle still on my wrist, declaring I’m twenty-one and Karissa’s friend and old and cool enough to go to Dirty Versailles.

  2An Elmo shirt that smells like smoked cigarettes and rain.

  3The summer ahead with Roxanne and Arizona and getting back to the life we used to all have together.

  four

  I am cooler today than I was yesterday.

  Arizona is bustier and sadder, things that go hand in hand in my opinion.

  I’m cooler not only because of Karissa’s special attention on me last night, but also because Roxanne has dyed my hair pink. We didn’t bleach it or anything. I wanted it to look dirty and vague. I wanted it to look beachy and sort of mine but sort of not. So the pink floats on top of my dark blond like a punk-rock veil, and I can’t stop looking at myself in window reflections as we walk to Washington Square Park.

  “Remember when you wanted to be pretty?” Arizona says, wrinkling her nose.

  “I thought you were all into changing ourselves,” I say. Her breasts are fully out today. Tank topped and pushed up and making me depressed. We used to sneak into each other’s beds every night and put water balloons under our shirts when we were feeling silly, pretending to be Janie or Natasha.

  “It’s not the worst thing in the world,” she says, “to try to be happy.”

  I wonder if she hears herself.

  I try to share a look with Roxanne, but she stabs her straw into her iced coffee until the tension lifts.

  “You both look great,” she says.

  “You should have run it by us,” I say to Arizona. “Like I asked you this morning what you thought about pink hair.”

  “And I said I thought it would look weird on you,” Arizona says. “Besides, I ran it by Roxanne. So chill.”

  Roxanne’s face matches my new hair.

  “You told Roxanne?” I say. It’s not like I don’t know that they talk without me. We have group emails and texts and three-way phone calls and video chats, but of course they talk about college crap on their own.

  I didn’t know they talked about things that mattered without me there.

  The sun is suddenly too bright. It’s funny how I waited all winter for the summer, and now I have a sweaty back and my eyes are watery from the intensity of the light and I’m hating how my legs look in shorts.

  “I knew Roxanne wouldn’t judge me,” Arizona says.

  “It’s not judgment to, like, question your choices and wonder why you’re going against everything that’s ever mattered to us,” I say.

  “I can do something for me and it can have nothing to do with you or Dad or whoever,” Arizona says.

  “Not when it’s plastic surgery!” I say too loudly.

  When we sit on our favorite benches, Roxanne plays some song on her phone, turning up the volume and singing along. It’s dirty and seems like the kind of song that isn’t popular yet but will be soon.

  I distract myself with someone else’s conversation. Two middle-aged women on the bench across from us complaining about their sons’ girlfriends. I want to enter their conversation and leave this one behind.

  What I really want is to ask Arizona and Roxanne how often they talk without me and whether they prefer it to talking with me. I want a map of the exact distance apart we’ve grown this year, so I can find my way back.

  “It’s off the table,” Arizona says, which is what we always say when we’ve decided something is no longer up for group discussion. Like when Roxanne started hooking up with her TA or when I skipped their graduation last year.

  “Let’s talk about the bags under your eyes and the sudden need to have cool hair,” Roxanne says to me.

  “Girl was out of control last night,” Arizona says.

  “You didn’t invite me?” Roxanne pouts, and I think maybe against all odds our first day back together is going to be a good day in the park. The kind where we laugh and tease and buy ice cream from the truck and feel both five and twenty-five at the same time.

  “I was out with Karissa. From acting class,” I say. They’ve both heard me talk about her perfectly wavy hair and the way everyone falls over themselves trying to get her attention. They’ve heard about her jangling bracelets and every color of cowboy boots and neon lacy bras peeking out under all manner of T-shirt and tank top and reconstructed sweatshirt.

  “Ah. She tell you to dye your hair?” Roxanne says. I blush. I don’t want that to be the case, and it isn’t exactly, but I’m not a true original like Roxanne. I am trying to be cool, which isn’t the same thing as actually being cool, and I know it.

  “Trying to be more like you,” I snark back. I know compared to Roxanne’s spirit and Arizona’s smartness I’m nothing special. But to Karissa I’m something more. Trying to explain it makes me sound even lamer, though.

  Arizona sighs and brushes her fingers through her hair. She is practicing different looks. Sexy. Sultry. Kitten-y. Aloof. I want to call her on it, but I think everything Arizona-related is off the table today.

  “We were at a bar,” I say. “Dirty Versailles. Lower East Side. Near that hairdresser you go to. Sluts and Posers?”

  “Pimps and Pinups,” Roxanne says, laughing like a maniac.

  “Exactly.”

  It’s so sunny we’re all squinting. The air smells like roasting nuts and dog urine and New York, a not-terrible combination that grows more pungent in the summer.

  “You still smell sort of alcohol-y, now that you mention it,” Roxanne says.

  “You said I couldn’t shower before you dyed my hair!”

  “I said you couldn’t wash your hair! Gross! You’re gross!” Roxanne
says too loudly. Arizona hides her eyes. Anyone walking by would now wonder if she’s part of our group or on her own. She doesn’t fit. I shift away from her and watch the dude juggling by the fountain. Roxanne lights a cigarette and we share it, passing it back and forth, tilting our chins to the sky as we exhale.

  “Montana show you the guy yet?” Roxanne says. We’ve been coming to the park every day since she got home, so she’s had several sightings of Bernardo, who sits on the bench across from us.

  Arizona scans the park and points at a guy in a sleeveless tank. “Him?” she says.

  I think she’s joking, so I scoff before realizing she was making a legitimate guess. “Oh. He’s cute, sort of. But no. Him.” I nod my head in Bernardo’s direction.

  We’re all looking at him pretty intensely and I’m preening, running fingers through my almost pink hair and wondering if day-after wine smells good or bad on my skin. Truth be told, I didn’t want to let go of last night, and that’s why I didn’t shower. Why I had to keep that poodle stamp on my hand and the little bit of Karissa’s fruity perfume hanging on my skin.

  Bernardo smiles. Points to his own head, then to my head, and gives a thumbs-up.

  Swoon.

  The boy across the park: he wears a man-scarf and has thick glasses with dark frames and cool sneakers, and sometimes he reads books in Spanish and sometimes he reads books in English, and when I found out from a little detective work that his name is Bernardo, I started writing that name all over my Lists of Things to Be Grateful For. I don’t know him, but he seems like someone to be grateful for.

  I’m always grateful for dimples, after all.

  He and his group of friends sit on the benches across from mine. We eye-flirted with each other for the first month. Nothing more. I noticed he was reading the same book as me. The Great Gatsby. I figured his school was probably doing a unit on it too.

  Then it was the Stephen King novel I was chilling out with.

  Then Catcher in the Rye.

  Then The Hunger Games.

  Then Valley of the Dolls.

  After Valley of the Dolls we started nodding at each other. Then waving. Then holding the books up so they covered most of our faces and peering over the tops. It’s been the best, weirdest, quietest flirtation.

  Arizona thinks it sounds creepy, but ever since she started at Colby she thinks everything I do sounds sort of lame or weird or creepy. Roxanne and I think it’s hot as hell. I can’t stop thinking about the messiness of his hair and the warmth of his eyes and the relaxed way he leans back when he’s sitting on the bench, how his body says I’m all good with his arms stretched out on either side of him, his elbows pointing behind him.

  “There’s a guy like him on my floor at Bard,” Roxanne says. “But, like, a way druggier version of him. We made out at this party. Good kisser. Bodes well for your boy.” I don’t want to hear about Bard, but I try to smile and nod like I’m supposed to do.

  “You colleged better than me,” Arizona says. “You need to teach me your ways so I can college better next year.” Roxanne says something about guys you meet in class versus ones you meet at parties and the differing hookup potentials of both and I tune out.

  He gets up from the bench and doesn’t break eye contact with me as he walks over. He nearly trips over mariachi players and a kid on a motorized scooter that should be outlawed. It’s happening.

  I don’t think Bernardo is walking toward me because of the almost pink hair. But I hope it’s made him realize I’m not the kind of girl who will wait forever for the cute guy on the other side of the park to say hello. And I’ve already been waiting two months. Since the moment it got warm enough to reasonably sit on a park bench for two hours every day after school. It’s what I used to do with Arizona and Roxanne, so it’s what I continued to do this year. I couldn’t think of how to do spring and summer any differently.

  “He’s on the move,” Roxanne says.

  “He wants to ask what the hell you have done to your beautiful hair,” Arizona says.

  “My hair’s never been beautiful,” I say. But I so badly want him to think it’s beautiful. Then and now. Always. “Maybe I should text Karissa and ask her what to do.” I’m sort of showing off. I want them to know she’s the kind of friend I could text in the middle of the day. I want them to know what level I’m at. “Guys seriously love her.” I take my phone out and start tapping away, something about how can I get a cute guy in the park to talk to me? I hit send and remember her saying we should be best friends. Hopefully she remembers that too.

  Bernardo is closer than he’s ever been. In a few more strides he’ll be at our bench, and I’ll know the sound of his voice and the exact shade of his eyes. “Make eye contact! Eye contact is key!” Roxanne says under her breath. I keep my gaze on him. It’s nice to have someone who can help me figure out what to do. I probably should have made new friends this year, but I didn’t really bother.

  “You look the same but different,” Bernardo says. He stands right in front of me, and I have no idea if I should stand up or stay seated. I grip my own thighs and squeeze, hoping I can keep all the nervousness there and not in my face or my voice. I feel all sixth-grade-ish. In a good way.

  He’s wearing a navy T-shirt with some band name I’ve never heard of on the front in big white block lettering. His hair is messier than usual, poking out every which way. Thick and black and chaotic. There’s a gap between his front teeth and his nose is crooked. He is unkempt and imperfect and staring at my almost pink hair.

  “I’d say thank you, but that’s not exactly a compliment,” I say. I twirl my hair between two fingers. I wish it were even pinker.

  “I’m Bernardo,” he says.

  “I know. I’m Montana,” I say. We’re smiling at each other and it’s the greatest. Like we already have a secret and the rest of the world is left out.

  My father says that sometimes not knowing someone is even better than knowing them. I try to un-hear those words and un-feel the truth of them right now. Taking relationship advice from my divorced-four-times father isn’t wise.

  “You should do the pink hair too,” I say. I don’t know why that comes out, except I’m so hyperaware of my new look that I’m having trouble thinking of anything else to talk about.

  I want him to know I can talk about other things: favorite street performers in Washington Square Park, least favorite books from school this year, whether beer tastes like urine or like wheat, what kind of music the band on his T-shirt plays and if he prefers to listen to them on his headphones when he’s walking around the Village or if he’d rather blast them on speakers at home. But all I can talk about is the shade of pink now adorning my head.

  “You think I could pull it off?” Bernardo says. He reaches for my hair, picks a clump up, and puts it against his face like we’re going to really check and see how he’d look with pink hair. Almost pink.

  “Are you too scared?” I say. Roxanne giggles. She and Arizona are staying quiet but focused. Bernardo’s friends watch us from their bench. Someone near the fountain is playing terrible accordion. Bernardo gives me a long look.

  “I’m scared, but also awesome,” he says. I can feel Arizona rolling her eyes next to me. It doesn’t matter that I can’t see her. She’s my sister; I know what sentences she’ll love and which ones she’ll hate. I know her opinions before she tells them to me. That hasn’t changed.

  She’s gone from finding him sweet to finding him lame. I can feel it. She has her Stepmothers Look on her face. Judge-y and sure. I’d bet money on it.

  “I don’t know what scared but awesome means,” I say.

  “It means let’s do it. Let’s dye my hair pink.” He winks but doesn’t smile. The accordion player is attempting a version of “Happy Birthday” to no one and Arizona is shaking her head no, no, no. I think he might be serious.

  “Right now?” I say.

  “Oh my God yes right now yes!” Roxanne says, a flurry of words and breathiness. She rushes forw
ard like a puppy let off leash at last.

  “You don’t have to do this. I was pretty much joking.” I’m shy around him, even though the guy has been watching me all spring and is now willing to dye his hair for me. I don’t know him; he’s still a stranger and a cute boy, and now that he’s seen fun Roxanne and Arizona’s new body, I don’t know why he likes me.

  “It seems like you might be worth it,” he says.

  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.”