From Bad to Cursed (13 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, I sat down next to Carter. Was it just me, or did he seem distant? Distracted?

“Carter,” I said, just wanting his attention. When he looked straight at me, I regretted it, imagining how grotesque I must look—my wide, shiny face washed out in the sunlight, revealing my yellow teeth with every word I spoke.

“Did you floss this morning?” he asked.

I reared away—was he trying to hint at something?

“I’ll be right back,” I said, hurrying toward the girls’ restroom.

I leaned in to inspect my teeth in the hazy mirror. They were the color of old mayonnaise, and thanks to my wisdom teeth starting to grow, the bottom ones were crowding in toward one another like a mob of miscreants—but there was nothing actually stuck between them.

Then I recalled my fictional dentist appointment. I sighed, blotted my skin with a paper towel, and went back outside.

Carter was talking to a girl.

As I got closer, I recognized Zoe. At the party I’d found her dull, but now she struck me as beguilingly wholesome. Her pale blond hair reached almost all the way down her back, glowing in the sunlight like corn silk. Her skin was peachy and fresh, and her features were elfin. I felt like an elephant trundling across the courtyard toward them.

Carter held his hand out to me when I got close. But I didn’t take it. Instead, I stuck my hands in the pockets of my skirt to hide my ragged fingernails and sat down.

“You guys haven’t officially met, have you?” Carter asked. “Alexis, this is Zoe…Zoe, my girlfriend…Alexis.”

“Hi, Alexis,” Zoe said, smiling like a skin-cream model.

Zoe, my girlfriend
was all I heard. Why would you ever want
Alexis, my girlfriend
if you could have this beaming, healthy young thing?

I felt something rise in my chest as humiliated tears pricked at my tear ducts. I wiped them away and stared at the sky, trying not to hear the happy lilt of Carter and Zoe’s conversation.

“I have to go,” I said, standing abruptly. In answer to Carter’s questioning look, I added, “—talk to my sister.”

“Okay,” Zoe said. “Nice to meet you!”

Even her voice was sweet and springlike. I wanted to knock her down.

“Hey, Lex, you’ve got a spot,” Carter said, grabbing my shirt to hold me still. I looked down to find a dark gray smear on the side of my jeans.

“Oh, no! You should probably try to wash that off,” Zoe said, clucking with fake concern.

“It won’t come off,” I said, pulling my shirt out of Carter’s reach. “See you later.”

Now I had a giant sloppy stain on my pants, which was reason enough to flee. But more than that, I wanted to get away, hide my hideous self from Carter before he had the chance to realize the enormous mistake he’d made when he decided to be my boyfriend.

I got up early the next morning and spent an extra twenty minutes picking out a cute skirt and white shirt, wrestling with my hair, and slathering on makeup. I pictured Carter’s face lighting up when I found him, enchanted, enthralled, captivated—all the Disney princess words.

But he hardly even looked up from his book.

“No cavities?” Carter asked.

This time, I remembered the lie. “Nope,” I said, sitting down, trying to spread my skirt out beneath my legs so the grit of the wall didn’t touch my skin.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You seem…”

“I’m fine,” I said, sucking in my stomach.

“Looking forward to dinner tonight?” he asked.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.” Another chance to gain a pound or two. Just what I needed.

“Hey, do you mind if I pick you up at seven instead of eight?” he asked. “I kind of need to get home early so I can finish my speech.”

Right. Student government speeches were tomorrow. That meant an assembly in the auditorium, bright lights, me in the front row. Everybody looking at me.

I shook my head. “Not at all,” I said.

Finally, he lowered the book and turned to me. “Lex, what’s wrong? All week you’ve been kind of out of it. Is your sister doing all right?”

I told myself to focus and gave him as much of a smile as I could muster. “Kasey’s good. I’m good too.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve just been worried.”

Worried how? I wanted to ask. Worried that when the school sees the drab chubster you’re dating, it will make them question your judgment and cost you the election?

Miss Nagesh noticed my efforts, at least. She gave me the once-over and said, “Ooh la la! Check out Miss Fancypants!”

She was cataloguing a new shipment of audiovisual equipment, and I was starting the 400s—Languages. Eager to do something that would take my mind off Carter, I lost myself in the work.

“We’re going to have to clean off some shelves in the equipment room,” Miss Nagesh said, interrupting me.

I glanced up to see her holding an ancient film canister.

“I hate to lose these cheesy old filmstrips, but they take up so much room,” she said. “Oh, well. How are you?”

“I’m up to…” I looked down and blinked.

“What?” she said.

“The five-forties,” I said.

She gave me a confused smile. “No, you just started the four hundreds.”

“I know,” I said. “But I…”

She knelt and looked at the shelves. “Wow,” she said at last. “Okay, well. Great.”

I stared at the hundreds of books I’d reshelved.

“Maybe you should wear your fancypants more often,” Miss Nagesh said, carrying the film can away.

When she was gone, I started back at the beginning of the section and skimmed every single number on every single book.

They were perfect.

* * *

The Sunshine Club called a special meeting that day. I tried to tuck myself into a far corner so no one would notice me. I was hyperaware of how much less polished I looked than the other girls, and a sense of certainty grew inside me that someone was going to know I was a fraud and call me on it. No way could a real member be so awkward and ugly.

Part of me was convinced that the whole reason for the meeting was to expose my lies.

What would they do to me when the truth came out?

I held my breath during Betterment, petrified that someone would bring up my lack of sunniness. My hands went cold when Lydia stood up and her eyes brushed over mine.

“Being part of this club involves a commitment,” she said. “Not just to come to the meetings and try hard to be your best, but to accept the gifts that Aralt wants to give you.”

Like
they
needed gifts. Every time I looked at another Sunshine Club member, I was reminded again. They all seemed to get prettier every day, while I felt uglier and more like a reject. It was completely unfair that Aralt would keep showering them with beauty and poise while I was left out.

And all because I’d gamed the system by swearing with the wrong hand.

We were up to twelve girls, and I would have sworn there were twenty-two eyes on me as Lydia spoke. I waited to hear my name. To hear an accusation that I was a faker, an imposter.

But then Lydia smiled. “I just wanted to remind everyone. Remember, Aralt loves you—not just for who you are, but for who you
can
be.”

And that was it. That was the whole meeting. No one outed me, no one even seemed suspicious.

They still don’t know,
I thought.

I ducked away as quickly as possible. I was outside waiting by Megan’s car when she and Kasey came out.

“What’s wrong, Alexis?” Megan asked.

“I have to get home,” I said. My voice was brittle. “I have dinner with Carter tonight.”

At home I locked my bedroom door and threw my closet open, searching for something that might look okay. I found a simple black dress and put it on, then slipped on a pair of black shoes and went to the bathroom to do my hair. I brushed my hair back into a high ponytail and put on red lipstick and mascara.

Then I inspected myself.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. On so many levels I couldn’t even explain it. The boxy shoes made my legs look stumpy. The sleeves of the dress stopped on the fattest point of my arms, and the high neckline made me look about eighty. Plus my severe pink hair and red lips made me look like a decommissioned Russian spy robot from the 1980s.

I stared at the mirror, wondering what Carter would say if he saw me.…

What the Sunshine Club would say.

He deserves better than this.

And I thought of the way everyone else managed to look like they were right out of the pages of one of the fashion magazines that were passed around the lunch table every day.

The clock said it was five. Two hours—was that enough time?

What difference did it make? I had no choice. Worst-case scenario was staring at me in the mirror.

I called Lydia.

Forty-five minutes later, I sat on the edge of the tub while she massaged dye into my scalp. While it processed, she read a magazine, and I tried to focus on the book I was supposed to be reading for English.

Finally, the timer dinged and Lydia rinsed the dye out. I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was still shiny and puffy, my eyes were too close together, and I saw with alarming clarity the bushiness of my eyebrows.

But my hair, which just an hour earlier had looked like a Brillo pad on a bad day, was a relief. It was soaking wet, but it was dark and healthy looking. Pink hair had been part of my identity for years, but already I knew I wasn’t going to miss it.

“Ready for a cut?” Lydia asked, smiling. She wore a crisp black apron over her white button-down shirt and pleated red skirt. With her hair turned under, she looked like a retro housewife. In a million years, I’d never try to handle hair dye in a white shirt, but she didn’t get so much as a droplet on herself. She picked up a pair of wicked-looking scissors. “I was thinking longish layers that end around your shoulders.”

“Do whatever you want,” I said.

“I intend to,” she said, using her left hand to fluff my hair. “I’m so happy that you changed your mind, Alexis.”

I had no choice but to look almost straight up at her. “Me too.”

“I meant what I said at the meeting, you know. Aralt gives us so much,” she said, “and asks for so little.”

I was sure that was true for her and the rest of them. But so far, all I’d gotten out of the Sunshine Club was a healthy dose of paranoia.

Her hands—and the shears—were outside of my peripheral vision.

And I realized how very, very exposed my throat was. I could feel the delicate curve of it, stretched out like an apple on a cutting board.

I snapped my head down.

Lydia laughed. “Oh, Alexis. What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying not to be obvious as I tucked my chin down protectively over my neck.

“I’m sure that’s true,” she said, and her smile was like a poem in a different language.

She went to work, combing and parting and cutting. Big chunks fell to the floor. After the cut, she attacked me with a blow-dryer, cans of hairspray, tweezers, and a whole palette of makeup.

“Ready?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure.

“Too bad! Turn around!” Lydia said, like an inventor unveiling a miraculous machine.

Then I saw myself, and I understood why.

“Who is that?” I asked. Because it wasn’t
me
staring out of the mirror.

I didn’t have hair that hung in smooth waves of chocolate-colored silk. And I didn’t have eyebrows that arched like a 1940s movie star’s. Or eyelashes so thick and long that they made little picture frames for my blue eyes. Which, by the way, were not usually that blue.

And my lips didn’t look like that.

So it couldn’t be me.

I took a deep breath. But it
was
me. This was the new Alexis, like it or not.

Like it
, came a little voice from inside me.

And something, some sensation, came bubbling through my body, starting at my feet and ending in a shiver at the crown of my head. It wasn’t like
I
was happy. It was like that feeling you get watching someone open a gift you gave them, when you know
they’re
going to love it.

This is what he deserves.

I felt my chest tighten. Because the “he” that popped into my head wasn’t Carter.

It was Aralt.

Lydia leaned in close to my ear. “Can you feel it?” she whispered. “He’s pleased.”

I watched the reflection of the dazzling stranger shake her head. “But Lydia, you don’t understand. I’m not the same as the rest of you. There’s something I…”

“What, your left-handed stunt?”

I waited for a blast of anger. But she gave my hair an affectionate ruffle.

“It doesn’t mean anything, Alexis. The hand on the book—Adrienne made that up because she thinks it looks cool.”

Inside my head, my thoughts reeled. I
had
taken the oath. I
was
connected to Aralt. And everything I was feeling was tied to the Sunshine Club.

“You poor thing,” Lydia said, her voice as sweet as honey. “All this time, you’ve been feeling so alone. But you were one of us all along.”

One of us all along.

I should have been scared, right? Or worried? Angry?

But I just couldn’t make myself feel those things.