Skin (4 page)

Slinky softens. She puts her elbows on the counter, rests her chin in her palms, and studies my face. “Did you choose that pink you’re wearing?”

“Yes. But I was only ten then.”

“Good. Do you want me to choose a shade for you?”

“Yes. Please.” Then I add, “Thank you.”

Her fingers run over the dozens of glossy tubes. “Here.”

“That’s purple.”

“It’s burgundy. A wine color. It’s more sophisticated than that cotton-candy pink. It’ll look good on you. Give me your hand.”

I stretch my hand out.

She draws a heart on the back of my hand in purple lipstick. “See? Isn’t that nice?”

“I’ll take it.”

“Apply it lightly. Not gobbed on like that.”

My lipstick is gobbed on? “Lightly does it,” I say.

“Do you want mascara, too?”

“No.”

“Yeah, you don’t really need it, with those black lashes. How about some tweezers?” She’s eyeing my brows.

Does she want to totally remake me? But this is her job—right. “Tweezing hurts.” I remember well from middle school.

“What’s a little pain for beauty?”

“It just grows back anyway.”

Slinky laughs, but in the nicest way.

I pay and half-run all the way home. Purple lipstick. What did I just do? Do I even like purple? I feel a strong need for the privacy of my bedroom. I sneak in the front door.

“Slut’s home.”

“Don’t call her that.” Mamma comes running out to me. “Why are you so late? How are you feeling?”

“No vomiting. No fever. What else did you ask this morning? Oh yeah, no bleeding.”

“Unless you count her period,” yells Dante from the living room.

I don’t have my period. But it’s coming. I can feel it in the heavy blumpiness of my belly. How did Dante know?

I stand in the hall and look at Dante. He’s on the floor in front of Nonno’s chair. Nonno was Mamma’s father. He’s
been dead over a year. Still, no one sits in the soft fake leather that used to hold his indentation.

Except Rattle. Who isn’t there now.

When Mamma’s cooking, Rattle’s in the kitchen—and Mamma’s clearly been cooking. Her hands are garlic. Rattle is undoubtedly under the table, nose lifted hopefully toward the stove, since his sense of smell is great, even if he’s too blind to see anything.

Rattle came from the SPCA when he was only a year old. An overgrown mutt puppy with a broken tail. He thumps it on the floor, and immediately you know it’s separate pieces inside. Without all that hair, it would rattle. But there is all that hair. So how did Dante know enough to name him that, and when he was only five?

Does my brother have unknown powers?

Mamma’s been looking me over this whole while. “You seem healthy. Go wash off that lipstick and let’s take a peek.” She clasps her hands in front of her waist.

I should tell her about the lipstick coming off at lunch and the little wispy white spots that showed. But I can’t bring myself to, her face is so hopeful. And now I’m suddenly mad at her. I managed to keep a good perspective all day long and now she’s ruined it. “You’re making this into some big thing!”

“Me? No, I’m not.” Her face falls.

She’s hurt? This is so unfair. I’m the one with the white lips. “Forget it. Soap and water?”

“Cold cream. I have some.”

We go to the bathroom off her and Dad’s bedroom. She opens a cold cream jar. I dip in a finger and smear it over my lips. White everywhere. Then I wipe with a tissue.

The pink is gone.

My lips are white.

“It must be a character flaw,” I say. “Probably fatal.”

“Dr. Ratner said—”

“I was kidding, Mamma.” Permanently disfiguring. Not fatal.

THE GRAPH OF Y=X
²
is a nice deep bowl of a curve with the lowest point at the origin. The sides are mirror images of each other—symmetrical. All these graphs on our calculus homework are familiar to me from ninth-grade geometry, but they’re fun to do again. Symmetries galore.

I touch my lips. They are symmetrical across a vertical axis. Symmetry is part of beauty. Experiments prove that; when presented with pictures of faces, people invariably find the symmetrical ones most attractive. I read about that in sixth grade, for a school project on birds.

Animals turn out to care about symmetry, too. Female zebra finches choose mates with symmetrically colored
leg bands. And beauty has a halo effect: attractive people are also judged to be more intelligent and better-adjusted. They’re more popular.

So beauty matters. At least in most people’s eyes. Undoubtedly in Joshua Winer’s eyes.

I’m getting blue again.

None of that—back to graphs.

I like asymptotes. I don’t remember if we learned that word in ninth grade. If we did, we didn’t make a big deal out of it. But Ms. Brame made a big deal out of it today in class.

An asymptote is a line which a curve moves toward as it tends toward infinity but will never reach. I like that idea, though I guess it could be thought of as sad—a poor curve striving to meet a line.

I’m graphing our homework functions while I watch TV. Some CSI thing. My laptop is open beside me. I’m not doing anything with it—Devin and I already IM-ed each other. But it’s just good to be logged on. Ready.

“Pina, phone,” Mamma calls from the kitchen.

I heard it ring, but I never figured it would be for me. A friend would text me. So I’m jangly now. And I don’t like it that whoever is on that phone heard Mamma call me Pina. I run up the basement steps and take the receiver from her. “Hello?”

“Oh, hello, it’s Mrs. Harrison.”

“Hi.”

She wants me to babysit. I love Sarah, her daughter, but I feel suddenly tired. The last time I sat for Sarah, she painted her face with chocolate. Only it wasn’t chocolate. She just thought it was chocolate. It was some kind of chocolate-flavored laxative. And she kept licking it off her hands and I didn’t know how much she had eaten, so I had to call Mamma and we gave her ipecac and she vomited the rest of the night. And had diarrhea, as well. That was a normal night for Sarah.

“How was your first day of school?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“I was wondering if you could babysit Friday night. We’re going out around seven, and I guess we’ll be back by midnight.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Oh.” Silence for a moment. “Well, you know, you’re in eleventh grade now and you have so much experience sitting, we’ve decided to raise your pay an extra dollar an hour. How does that sound?”

“That’s nice. But I can’t, Mrs. Harrison.”

“Did I say ‘dollar’? I meant two dollars.”

“I’m already doing something Friday.”

“You have a date?” She’s not good at hiding her surprise.

I’m almost insulted. Except the people I’m friends with don’t usually date. We hang out together. It’s different. “A party. Anyway, I’m busy.”

“How about a bonus of five dollars at the end of the evening? That’s on top of the raise.”

“It’s not the money, Mrs. Harrison.”

“Please, Pina.”

Whining is unfair. And it’s horrible that she calls me Pina. I hope that’s not her new name for me. “I really can’t. You’ll find someone else.”

“Of course. Of course I will. Good-bye.” Her voice is so sad. “Enjoy your party. Good night, dear.”

I hang up.

Mrs. Harrison called me dear, but she must want to kill me now. Or maybe she wants to kill Sarah.

I go back down into the basement. There’s a message for me on my cell. I blink in disbelief: it’s Joshua Winer.

I’ve texted with Joshua Winer only once before, in fifth grade. We did it just to figure out how texting worked. This feels different. Well, it is different. I stare at his question:

“hey, Sep. hows homework?”

I type: “fine.” That’s lame. That’s what I always say. I delete and type: “normal.”

“what r u doing?”

I type: “learning about asymptotes.” Then I look at it. What if he doesn’t know the word? I delete. I type: “not much.”

“im reading physics.”

I type: “i have physics next semester.”

“2 bad. U could have coached me.”

What do I say to that? I type: “Ha.” But what if he thinks I’m laughing at him? Even when we were little, he didn’t like science so much. Except the part on weather. I remember him getting all excited about precipitation and air pressure and wind and everything. He was cute. I delete and type: “i have to translate a ton of Latin.”

“u should take Spanish. its easy.”

I type: “MayB next semester.”

“then i can coach u.”

I swallow. I type: “that would B fine.” Then I delete fine and type nice.

“i liked ur lipstick today.”

I remember the clerk in the department store. I type: “u didnt think it looked like candy?”

“i like candy. it tastes good.”

Oh… my… God. Joshua Winer is flirting with me. And he’s bad at it. My cheeks are so hot, it feels like a fever. I type: “have to finish my homework. see u.”

“at the party friday. gnite.”

I lower myself to the floor and lie on my back and stare at the pipes that run across our basement ceiling. I close my eyes.

Yes, it is quite clear that my luck sucks: a popular guy notices me just when my lips have turned white and who knows what’s wrong with me. And this particular popular guy is the grown-up version of a guy I used to know well, a guy I used to really like. And he liked my lipstick. A lot. He likes a façade that isn’t me at all. Maybe he doesn’t remember the me I was in fifth grade. Maybe he can’t see the real me past the lipstick. Maybe once my lips turn back to whatever color they really are, and I stop with the lipstick, he’ll walk off without another glance.

“What’s the matter, Slut?”

“I’m dead. That’s why my lips are white. All the blood has drained out of me.”

“Don’t joke around.”

I open my eyes.

Dante’s on his knees beside me. His face is actually concerned. And this morning he was nice to me. Is the whole world changing?

“I just decided to lie down.”

Dante sits on the couch. “That what eleventh grade does to you?”

“How was your first day of high school?”

“You heard at dinner.”

“Yeah, but that was the version you told the parents. How was it really?”

“I only got lost once.”

“Good.”

“I only got punched once.”

“Excellent.”

“I don’t think Ms. LeHiste is as bad an English teacher as you said.”

“To each his own.”

Dante picks up my cell. “Looks like you have a boyfriend.”

I jump up and grab it. There’s a message—but it’s just from Owen. “That’s Owen, idiot.”

“He’s a guy.”

“Guys and girls are friends in high school. Start texting girls. You’ll see. It’s a lot better than the stupid stuff that happens in middle school.”

“Oh yeah? Friends? Look at his message.”

I look at it again. Owen wrote: “the answer to sex this year.”

“There’s a nonromantic explanation for it, I assure you,” I say.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked him yet.”

“Yeah,” says Dante, knowingly.

“Come off it. It’s just Owen, idiot.”

“Sure. That’s how it starts. With Owen Idiot. Then he becomes Owen Not So Dumb. Then Owen Smart. Then you’re in love.”

“Good night, Squirt.” I take my computer and cell and go upstairs.

“Good night, Slut,” he calls up after me.

I go into my bedroom, close the door, drape myself across the bed, and type: “whats the answer to sex?”

“Yes, please.”

Yes, please
. I grin at the words. This is infantile. But I like it anyway. I type: “ur the best.” And he is; he never fails to make me laugh.

I already filled out all the school registration information and cards they handed out in homeroom today. In pen. Too bad. I hate to be messy. But sometimes you have to make concessions.

I take all the forms and cards out of my backpack and search for the ‘sex’ slots. They usually come right after ‘name.’ I cross out F and write yes, but there isn’t enough room to add please. Owen must have said that just for my benefit. It sounds better.

Poor Mr. Eberly. I wonder if he gets a headache or if he
just thinks we’re all pathetic or if he actually laughs now and then. I would never want to be head counselor at a high school. Kids can be jerks. I’m being a jerk.

When I look back at the cell, Owen’s words greet me: “so r u”

I type: “Latin then bed. see u tomorrow.” I sit up and translate Latin. Usually I like nothing better than unpacking the information in a long, Latin verb, but tonight I find myself falling asleep.

I go to the kitchen and make my lunch for tomorrow. Same as what I had today. What’s the use of changing when what you have is good?