Invisible Girl (14 page)

The game goes on for forever. Amal has a baby voice on top of her southern accent, which everyone just seems to find so charming.

In normal times, I’d consider eating chips to help promote my boob growth, but I’m never going to have any friends or boyfriends again anyway, so what’s the point?

Amal is terrible at pool but no one playing seems to care. Annie’s become her big sister. Andrew has become the Big Demonstrator. Twice, he’s stood behind her and put the cue in her hands to line up her shot.

I float through the party, a stranger from a strange planet, passing little knots of conversations that are impossible to join.

Their pool game ends just as the doorbell rings for the pizza guy. Annie screams she’s coming. The guys follow her to the door to carry the boxes of pizza into the kitchen. Annie tells me to get the paper plates.

I don’t really like being ordered around, but there’s not much else you can do but try to help once you’ve been disgraced.

All the guys fold their pizza in half and shove it in their mouths. All the girls bite off tiny pieces and act like they’re not that hungry even though I know they are. Everyone keeps asking Amal questions about Georgia and having her say words with her accent. It’s too painful to watch.

I slip outside, planning to say I’m too hot if anyone asks, but nobody notices. I’ve been out there alone, sitting in the gazebo at the far end of the yard, for more than an hour when the rest of them tumble out to play night volleyball.

I can hear their shouts glide on the wind. Laughter rolls up in short duets, high for the girls, low for the guys. No one is wondering where I am. No concerned faces come and ask what’s up with me.

Shadows of two of the girls leave the volleyball net and I make my way up behind them. Leslie and Emily sit on one of the stone benches taking a cigarette break. I’m silent as I approach. Leslie picks her hair up off her neck like she’s a little sweaty from the game.

I’m just about to open up, take the risk and say, “What’s up” or something, like maybe, even if I’m not Annie’s cousin and even if I did barf all over Andrew last night, they’ll at least think they can talk to me because I’m Annie’s houseguest. I clear my throat and start to open my mouth when I hear Amal scream, “So this is what y’all do in California,” and Andrew tackles her, making sure he lands beneath her, protecting her from the ground.

I swallow the words in a sawdust throat, then scuttle back into the shadows.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Amal’s crush on Andrew scurries around our nest of towels like dry leaves before a tornado. It rises in the air to zing through the quick glances between Annie, Leslie and Emily, then finally rests in my neck muscles and forehead that feel as if they’ve been hit by a baseball bat.

Eva’s not at the club yet and neither are any of the guys. I lie on my towel and close my eyes. Even though I slipped upstairs to bed a little while after Andrew’s big tackle last night, I didn’t sleep for hours. At first, it was just too noisy. Music blared and people shouted. Then later, when the music wasn’t so loud, it was the quiet laughter that kept my eyes stuck open, high, golden notes of merriment that leapt into my room and fell over my body like a cage.

I slit my lids to see what’s happening. Am I so far out of the group that there will be no official mourning for me? Will absolutely none of the flurry of feminine support that surrounded Annie when JKIII made his comment about Amal being hot come to my aid? Will there be no conversation at all about how I liked a boy, who seemed to like me, who now likes someone else?

Annie says the worst possible thing. “Where did you go off to last night? Carl was looking for you.”

Ah, now my role is clear. None of them would ever like Carl, but if I’m stuck hanging around, maybe Annie can pawn me off on him. Maybe he will keep me out of her hair until the blessed time when her mother can shove my butt on a plane and get me out of her life. Outrage makes my tongue dry. How dare she toss Carl at me like a scrap from Amal’s feasting on Andrew?

I pour some lotion on my stomach, concentrating on making a perfect circle. Neither Leslie nor Emily speak. Annie’s word is law. There will be no rallying of support and outpouring of sympathy. I have slipped from my lofty perch as a cousin of the queen and slid into the vague role of peasant. I am now The Expendable One. Just like Carl is expendable in their guy world, carrying their stuff or picking up everyone’s food at the club when their number is called.

In addition to my utter demotion, there exists the much more important issue of the new force in town. Nothing can interfere with the courting of Amal as Friend. Nothing can stop the crescendo of energy required to gather her into their midst, mark her with their words, phrases and private jokes so that they never have to fear her coming at them. Never have to turn a corner and see her stealing one of their own, one of their guys. The fact that she stole Andrew from me is of no consequence. I don’t matter.

Carl comes up to us and sits by Emily. He says hi to all of us. Everyone says hi back to him, and when I do it, he blushes and Leslie nudges him in the arm and giggles. Annie gives me a sharp look and I force a half giggle. I feel as if I’ve just opened another box of faded hand-me-downs from my older cousins.

Emily and Leslie giggle again. My mouth is too stiff to go up into another giggle. I still feel a sharp needle in my heart when I think about Andrew. I really liked him, and then poof, like that, it’s all over.

I need to turn over on my stomach, close my eyes and fade into the world of Harriet Tubman, just to get my bearings. Since I’ve buried Nancy Drew I get headaches from having to be me for so long.

When I’m only on my side, just about to roll onto my stomach, slapping and pushing rumbles from the stairs and I know that the rest of the group is here. I hurry and fall onto my towel. I don’t have time to unhook my strap and I hope nobody will know I’m faking concentrating on my tan because the girls never leave the straps across their backs.

The herd thunders toward us. There’s a jostling around the towels. Amal’s southern accent is being tried on by all the guys, especially Andrew. Annie and Amal lie next to each other and speak in excited whispers. I hear Annie say, “because both our names start with
A,
” and they both laugh.

Sharp betrayal lances my stomach. I hate Annie for ousting me and bringing this enemy into our camp. I blame Annie for having Andrew get a crush on Amal.

But really, down deep, I blame myself. I blame myself for being my mother’s daughter. I got drunk. I threw up. I disgraced myself.

Explosive laughter rises from one of the guys who picks up on the Amal-Annie thing. Matt says, “Their names both start with
A
, all right,” like having a name start with
A
is the Jeopardy answer to, “Why are these two women both goddesses?”

JKIII asks who wants to go swimming. Annie and Amal say they’ll go, and they laugh when they say it. I hear them clamor toward the steps. I keep my eyes closed.

Music filters up to my ears. Leslie’s iPod is plugged into a dock. Some song is playing about a girl who gets dumped by a guy.

My mind flickers. This is my song. Mine after Andrew walks out on me and our three kids. I see myself standing in the doorway of a humble home with green shutters and a swing set in the backyard, crying, while Andrew walks into the rain and gets into a car driven by Amal and her big boobs.

I sink farther into my towel. Sweat pools in the center of my back. Tears sneak out of my eyes. I pull my T-shirt over my face so I’m in a tiny white tent with only room enough to breathe. I open my eyes. Light comes in but it’s soft. Bad feelings rush into my stomach like they’ve been stuffed into my feet and have finally escaped. More and more tears pour out, and I wish another song would come on.

I do a new trick where I bite on my lip really hard so a little drop of blood comes into my mouth. I think of the pierce in my lip as being half of a snakebite. It almost helps push the bad stuff back into my feet, but then my mother’s face comes roaring up. She’s telling the doctor I broke my arm when I fell down the stairs, and I’m too afraid to tell him about the shiny silver bangles, the red flashing nails and her face squeezed in so much anger that I saw worms pour out of her eyes.

A new song comes on with a fast beat. It’s too hot in my T-shirt tent, and I think my tears have turned to steam.

I hear the crack of chairs on deck and I can tell that Eva, Emily and Leslie are reconfiguring their chairs so that their heads will all be really close together. I’m on the chair right next to them but I’m now so irrelevant, they don’t even care if I hear or not. I’m just like the guy flipping burgers at the snack bar, whom they never see, even when they’re gossiping right in front of him.

Eva’s whisper to the other girls cuts through the sounds of far-off splashing and laughing. “It’s not like her body is that great. I mean, in five years, she’ll be totally fat.”

Dangerous ground, you’d think, to say to Leslie, considering that she is plump herself.

“Totally,” Leslie tosses in. “I mean, I
know
I’m overweight, so I don’t go parading myself around like she does. She doesn’t even seem to think about it. Like she is just so sexy that no one even notices all her fat.”

So, apparently, the subject of fat is always a safe arrow to sling, just as long as one acknowledges her own imperfections first.

I slip my shirt tent to the side and look at Amal emerging from the water. I hadn’t gotten past the breasts before, but if I look hard enough, I guess I can see a little extra flesh at the thighs and a softness around her middle.

The three of them are just getting started. Emily, the sleepy peach, speaks in the most animated voice I have heard from her yet, as if nothing before has ever been as interesting as the dissection of Amal’s fat.

“Annie said last night that when we were all walking out of the club, Amal took one of the cookies. You know, the ones that they always have out for the guests by the front door?” They all murmur ascent and even I know what they’re talking about, because every day, Carl makes a trip to get a bunch of the free, giant chocolate chip cookies for the group. The guys all stuff a few in their mouths, but the girls only split one, between all of them, talking about sugar, carbs and fat grams even while they’re eating it.

Emily goes on, “Well, Annie said that Amal scarfed a whole cookie down, by herself. Then, she said to Annie, ‘Aren’t you getting one?’ and Annie goes, ‘What, with these thighs?’ And Amal just goes, ‘Well, they’re really good.’ ”

Emily sniffs. “Amal never even said one thing in defense of Annie’s thighs, or one thing bad about her own. Like she obviously really thinks she’s like a supermodel.”

They lean in even closer to each other. More venom spews from their lips. They go on to describe more and more ugly and repulsive aspects of Amal, all of which they have found out through Amal’s supposed new best friend, Annie.

Down below, in the water, Amal shrieks with laughter as she and Annie run away from the boys together, not realizing how false her position in this whole group is, and that if she wasn’t just so formidably beautiful, she would be cast adrift into the deep end, just like I am, with no one to save her from drowning.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The phone is slippery in my hand from sweat. My dad’s voice is thin and jerky like a small woodland animal constantly on the run. I ask him again if I can come home NOW because I have to get ready to start high school in Boston. Where I belong. He doesn’t answer. I can feel him scurrying for cover under an old log or pile of leaves. When he finally speaks, his voice is raspy, as if it’s hard coming back from being an animal and having to turn back into a dad. “Not quite yet,” he says. “But it won’t be real long. Your mother and I are finally talking. Maybe about getting her into a rehab.”

Talking? Rehab?
What the hell does all that mean? I clear my throat and give in to the anger. “So, why can’t you guys talk while I’m home?” I demand.

“It’s not that simple,” he says, running back through the woods. “The rehab is a live-in program. Minimum thirty days, but they like you to stay ninety.”

Poison wells in my throat like I’m a human blowgun. Is he kidding? He’s going to leave me stranded in the inner circle of hell for a minimum of thirty days? I open my mouth to release the darts defining his endless inadequacies when I suddenly stop. My mother’s face shrieks into the airspace in front of me. Her face is contorted with contempt. Rage bulges under her cheekbones.

I stand up and look in the mirror. My mother’s furious black eyes snap back at me. My breath draws in sharply. I take in my bunched cheeks and bitter sneer. Vignettes roll of so many moments watching my dad limp along after being lashed by her barbed tongue. I’m frozen in horror of who I’ve become. First the drinking and now this.

Am I going to start hitting next?

All my rage dissipates. “Whatever,” I whisper.

My father tries a fake-robust laugh and says, “I’ve already squared it with Michael and Sarah. Annie’s school sounds amazing.”

“Right,” I spit dryly, unable to resist rearing her head for one last barb. “Amazing.”

I sit at the edge of my bed and stare out the window for what seems like hours. There’s a knock at my bedroom door before Aunt Sarah enters and hands me two uniforms that she says I’ll be wearing to Annie’s school. I didn’t know they wore uniforms in schools that weren’t Catholic. In the public school in my neighborhood, the kids all wear jeans and the girls wear short shirts that show off swatches of their stomachs even in winter. But then, Annie’s school isn’t public. It’s rich-kid private.

Aunt Sarah sits on my bed and explains how Annie’s school normally works. She says the kids have to fill out applications, take tests and have interviews. She tells me I won’t have to do any of that because I’m there under special circumstances and that she doesn’t want me worrying about tuition because she and Uncle Michael have it covered.