The Girl with the Mermaid Hair (2 page)

S
UKIE held her phone at arm’s length and snapped.

A difficult thing, taking a selfie. Sometimes her face came out lopsided or only a piece of it showed. The photo she took today was critical, because she was about to enter Mr. Vickers’s AP English class, where she would present her report, “Ophelia: Angel or Fool?” For ten minutes she would be standing in front of the class.

She was tired, although she was pleased to see from the selfie that no one could tell. She’d gotten to bed at two in the morning, three hours later than usual. After completing her homework—a take-home test for AP math, her English essay, fifty pages of reading
about the Civil War for AP history, and a chapter for zoology on the scientific value of fruit flies, in addition to preparing for her debate question (con: Dubai, an environmental disaster) and taking a flute lesson (she’d eaten dinner in the car on the way over—ham and Swiss with lettuce and tomato on oat-nut bread and a bottle of water)…after all that, which was an ordinary day in her life, she’d gone into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Hours later she finally turned off the light. Her grandmother’s mirror had proved compelling.

It had a wrinkle in it—not an actual wrinkle, but because it was old, Sukie assumed, the glass appeared to wrinkle at approximately her waist level and made her waist appear smaller. This was fascinating and flattering, and she had viewed her waist from several angles to confirm it. She’d decided to rehearse her essay in front of the mirror, incorporating a back-and-forth stroll (rejected) and arm gestures (kept). Then while surfing the web she had come upon a site for would-be models that catalogued face and feature types. It had names for eyes like “almond,” “button,” “egg,” “half-moon” (which had less to do with shape than with the lids that sat low on the eyes like shades). Sukie, racing from the computer to the mirror, was
pleased to conclude that her type was “lake,” clearly the most desirable. Her eyes were large, wide set, and thickly lashed. They had allure and suggested depth of feeling and, she suspected, even passion.

Her grandmother’s mirror had a slight tint. Reflected in it, Sukie’s eyes, a warm cocoa color like her dad’s, appeared green. Not emerald, which would be thrilling, but a dark olive. Still, that was so much more interesting than brown that Sukie thanked the mirror and blew it a kiss.

She had always wished for blue-green eyes—the color of sea in a fairy-tale book, a sea that a mermaid swam in. Sukie had mermaid hair, a long wavy tangle of blond that fell below her shoulders. In the antique mirror, her hair appeared exceptionally lustrous. She pushed it around, threaded her fingers through it, grabbed a hunk that lay on her shoulder and pulled it forward to make eye contact as if to say, What is this, I’d forgotten all about you. Then she tossed it back over her shoulder as if her thick golden hair were nothing but a nuisance instead of a mane worthy of worship.

What had really kept her up late, however, was her nose, her most arresting feature. She was dreadfully self-conscious about it, and after studying nose varieties
on the web such as “Greek” (a straight and narrow nose, the most desirable) and “Miss Piggy” (the least), she decided that her own category was “ramp.” In fact, her prominent nose (inherited from her mother), while finely chiseled on the sides, did have a flatness from top to tip. Why this peculiarity made her more attractive rather than less is a mystery. Everyone knows but no one can explain why the unconventional, even a flaw, can make a person more beautiful.

Nevertheless, about this Sukie was clueless. She hated her nose. “Ramp,” she said, despairing at her reflection. “I have ramp.” By confirming this news, was the mirror being her best friend or her worst enemy? Sukie couldn’t decide which.

Mikey stuck his head in the door at that moment, his face in a crumple, which Sukie knew meant “I’m scared, I can’t sleep.”

“Okay,” she said. “Just for
Jeopardy!
” and he dove onto the bed.

Sukie taped
Jeopardy!
every day and watched before sleep. For her
Jeopardy!
was a lullaby. She beat the TV contestants that night as she always did, even being preoccupied with “ramp,” even not phrasing two answers as questions on purpose so that Mikey would get
to say, “I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.” The Final Jeopardy question was “the South American country farthest west.” “What is Peru?” said Sukie. She was the only one who got it. The contestants all wrote “What is Ecuador?” She and Mikey did their special pinkie lock, she shooed him back to his room, and she made one last notation in her journal—
I love my mirror
—before drifting off to sleep.

As she entered Mr. Vickers’s classroom, Sukie tried to glide as if she were wearing skates and the floor were ice. This gliding walk—graceful, eye-catching—fortified her with confidence.

Cobweb classrooms had tables, not desks. Round tables that seated six. “Cobweb is about the three C’s: creativity, community, and culture,” the principal announced every year at the first meeting, Cobweb’s cozy word for an all-school assembly. Sitting together at tables was supposed to foster a friendly, cooperative atmosphere.

“That’s all a crock,” said Sukie’s dad. “No one’s trying to get along, they’re trying to get ahead. That’s America.”

“Then why do you and Mom send me to Cobweb?”

“So you’ll get into a good college. Just don’t take that bunk seriously.”

Sukie sat at the middle table between Fleur Ames and Denicia Hays. Denicia was blowing a bubblegum bubble that popped as Sukie glided toward her. Denicia took the gum out of her mouth and used it to mop up stray gum bits on her face. “Hi,” said Sukie, while she thought, I would rather die than do that in public. Fleur had flopped her head down on the table and appeared to be napping. If she keeps that up, thought Sukie, the cheek she’s lying on will eventually droop lower than the other. Always sleep on your back, her mother had advised. It was a rule Sukie lived by, although sometimes when she awoke in the morning, she found herself on her side. Fleur was clearly someone who didn’t think about the future in any serious way, and not simply because her face was going to be lopsided. Fleur’s nails were at least two inches long, so long that they curved. It was practically impossible for her to hold a pencil or type on a computer, not to mention the annoyingly loud clattering as she attempted to hit the keys.

Obviously Fleur was not being raised properly. Were her parents even home?

When Sukie pulled her chair out, it banged into
Frannie, who was doodling at the table behind. “Sorry,” mumbled Sukie. Frannie shrugged.

One of the most important things in the world, Sukie’s dad had told her, was to look someone straight in the eye when you spoke to them. With Bobo, Sukie had been so nervous that she’d focused on a mole on his neck. On the debate team or when she had to read a report as she did today, she would force herself to make eye contact with her audience to “drive the points home,” as her dad put it. But she never looked Frannie Cavanaugh in the eye, no matter what.

Frannie’s father had died last spring, and Sukie kept thinking that she should say, “I’m sorry about your dad.” Sukie’s mom had even asked, “Did you tell Frannie that you’re sorry?” and Sukie had said, “Duh,” like she really needed reminding about that, but she’d never actually said word one to Frannie about her dad. Every day she’d think, I’ll do it today. Then she’d go home and say to herself, I’ll do it tomorrow for sure. But she never did, and now it was too late. The whole idea of it, losing your dad, didn’t seem real. If she didn’t acknowledge it, maybe it didn’t happen at all. Maybe it couldn’t happen to
her
. Nothing truly horrible had ever happened to Sukie, and she wanted to keep it that way.

To understand everything that frightened her about Frannie’s father’s death, Sukie would have to delve deep into her heart. Digging—unearthing painful truths, exploring subtlety, reveling in the complexity of emotion—was not her nature. Although that could change. She was fifteen years old. Nothing was set in stone.

Perhaps she was simply worried that Frannie would tell her that it was unspeakably rude not to have said, “I’m sorry about your dad.” Sukie didn’t like thinking about that. She didn’t like to acknowledge any situation in which she was less than perfect.

Sukie also felt sorry for Frannie because of her hair. Frannie’s hair was a big frizz. It didn’t move. The most important thing about hair—Sukie had given this a lot of thought—was that it should move.

“Hey, everyone, listen up. This is important.” Mr. Vickers waved a sheaf of papers. “Fleur, wake up, get some exercise and hand these out for me, thank you very much. Everyone should give this notice to your parents. They’ll go bat shit if you don’t.”

Mr. Vickers was always using language that, in Sukie’s opinion, had no place in school. And for some reason, he had cracked himself up, like what he’d said
was really amusing. Sukie read the large type at the top of the flyer. “Prepare for college. Find out what your child needs in order to get into the best school.”

What was funny about that?

She unzipped the small compartment on the side of her backpack. As she slipped the notice in, she felt the phone’s sleek surface. It vibrated. She jerked it out into her lap.

Bobo. A text from Bobo.

She slipped the college notice back out and opened it so that she would appear to be reading it while instead she read the text from Bobo:
ROLL ME OVER
.

Roll me over?

Sukie felt her blood rush in every direction that blood could rush.

Roll me over.

She didn’t even know what it meant.

But it meant something hot.

Although this could just be hello. A provocative hello for sure. But it didn’t feel like hello. It felt almost, but not quite, but maybe, nasty.

What should she say back?

“The college meeting is two weeks from Wednesday. I know your parents are concerned about your
futures, and even though there’s no reason to panic, after all you’re sophomores, you don’t take your college boards till next year…” Vickers droned on while Sukie sat there, thumbs poised, ready to tap. What was called for? “Hi 2 U.” No that’s dumb. Stupid. A big nothing. Roll me over. Hmm. Sukie tapped:
W-H-E-N W-E K-N-O-W E-A-C-H O-T-H-E-R B-E-T-T-E-R
.

Dorky. That was dorky. Or was it flirty? Too flirty? Yes. Beyond flirty? Sukie hit the delete and held it down.

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER BETTER

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER BETTE

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER BETT

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER BET

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER BE

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER B

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHE

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTH

WHEN WE KNOW EACH OT

WHEN WE KNOW EACH O

WHEN WE KNOW EACH

WHEN WE KNOW EAC

WHEN WE KNOW EA

WHEN WE KNOW E

WHEN WE KNOW

WHEN WE KNO

WHEN WE KN

WHEN WE K

WHEN WE

WHEN W

WHEN

Mr. Vickers’s hand slapped down in front of her so close she saw his lifeline. Sukie hit send.

“Hand it over,” said Vickers.

“I sent ‘when.’” The words popped out unbidden as Sukie confronted the horror.

“When what?”

“When nothing.”

The class laughed. Sukie tried to laugh, but her face was twitching. She’d offered to—what? She didn’t know what she’d offered Bobo, but she’d definitely agreed to whatever he’d asked. If he was asking. Was he asking? What was he asking? She held on to the phone.

“I’ll give it back to you after school.” Vickers tugged at her cell.

That night she wrote in her journal,
At that moment I was in the ocean clinging for life to a small boat. Realizing I
didn’t have the strength to hold on any longer, I felt my grip loosen and my fingers fail.

Vickers walked to the front of the class, unsnapped the buckle on his battered leather briefcase, and dropped the phone in.

“O
KAY, Sukie,” said Vickers. “Now that you’re light as a feather, phone-free, as they say. Come on, upsy. Time for Shakespeare. Let’s hear about Ophelia.”

Sukie dragged herself to the front of the class.

She forgot to do a little twist at the waist to force herself ramrod straight, and she could barely make out the words on the page through watery eyes. With one tap of the thumb she’d blown it with Bobo. Maybe. For sure. For sure maybe. She forgot to swing out her arm to go with “Ophelia was muddled, muddled by love,” and omitted a f lip of the hands up with a gentle push forward to underscore “Think about this: If Ophelia had had options as a woman, would she have ever gone
haywire?” When she spoke of Ophelia, dumped by Hamlet and desolate, climbing a tree, inching herself onto a branch, and falling to her death, everyone in the class mistook the tears in her voice for performance. For a second, to collect herself, she glanced up, and whose eye did she catch but Frannie’s, the sole person about whom she harbored a horrible guilt. She lowered her eyes and uttered the last words barely audibly, “Did Ophelia overreact?”

Mr. Vickers clapped. “Bravo. Beautifully presented and with such feeling.”

Sukie sank into her seat, relieved that she would get another A.

The instant the bell rang, she knocked Denicia out of the way. “Move, move.” Sukie barged up. “Mr. Vickers—”

“You’ll get it after school.” He turned his attention to Ethan, who wanted to change his topic. Ethan never liked his topics. Sukie had been in school with Ethan since the first grade, and there had never been one single assignment for which they were supposed to pick a topic when Ethan had stuck with the topic he’d picked. “Boring,” she told Ethan, sticking her sour face into his.

“You’re done here, Sukie,” said Vickers. “But, you know, you might have an addiction to your cell phone. Give it some thought. You kids are all phone addicts,” he bellowed at the backs of students filing out. “Consider a twelve-step program.
Adiós
till next time.”

It was one thing if your mom called you an addict, she had a right, but your teacher? In Sukie’s opinion, Vickers was seriously out of control. And weren’t his clothes a curiosity? Mostly he favored thick, woolly pullover sweaters. The one he was wearing today changed colors in a loud and utterly random pattern. Had someone knitted it blindfolded? Perhaps he’d selected it blindfolded. Perhaps he’d been turned loose in Harry’s, the local men’s store, where practically everything was plaid, wool, or flannel, and, in a kind of blindman’s bluff game, had had to buy whatever he crashed into.

These hostile thoughts didn’t bring her phone back, but they were comforting.

“Did something awful happen?” Fleur waylaid her in the locker room and struggled to suppress the thrill. The combination of Sukie and disaster gave her heart a happy flutter, but Sukie was too crazed to notice.

“Bobo,” said Sukie. It would be at least two hours
and twenty-two minutes before she could correct her mistake. This was perhaps the seventeenth time she’d computed the hours until she could get her phone back.
My mind was a blubber,
she wrote later in her journal. During lunch period at the Educating Girls Globally meeting, Sukie accidentally put her mascara into her lunch bag, tossed it in the trash, and had to fish it out. When she did reclaim her phone from Vickers, should she text
OOPS MISTAKE
to Bobo? Or
HO
,
HO
,
HO
, meaning her last message was a big joke? Or would he not even know what she was referring to since she’d sent her previous message six hours earlier?

She relived the incident with a different outcome. Vickers’s hand slapped down and Sukie’s thumb did not reflexively hit
SEND
. It lay there obediently.

“I said, ‘Is Bobo your dog?’”

Sukie was so preoccupied, she’d forgotten Fleur. “My dog’s name is Señor. Bobo is the quarterback at Hudson Glen.” God, how could Fleur not know? “The star quarterback.”

“Shoot, damn these lockers.” Fleur slammed her locker door, it bounced back, she slammed it again and examined her middle finger. “Twenty dollars down the drain. Don’t anyone move, there it is.”
She snatched something off the ground and showed it to Sukie. A two-inch fake nail painted a sparkly lavender.

“He texted me.”

Fleur tried to fit the nail back onto her middle finger.

“Bobo,” Sukie reminded her loudly to get the conversation back on track and attract some admiration from someone somewhere. Moira was jumping around while she tugged at too-small tights in an effort to get them up to her waist. Autumn was reading
Death of a Salesman
and mouthing the words to her part. Frannie, stretched out on a bench with a pencil balanced across her forehead, removed the pencil and shot her friend Jenna a look that was quite possibly amused.

“He plays football.” Sukie trumpeted the news again.

“Who has nail glue?” said Fleur, disappearing into a maze of lockers. Frannie rolled off the bench and pulled her feet up under her just in time not to crack her head on the cement floor. She and Jenna walked away, leaving Sukie alone in her lacy raspberry-colored bra, her best bra for creating breast envy.

After school, as soon as she rescued her phone from Vickers’s grimy paws, she rushed out of his classroom
and checked for messages. There was one.
PIZZA. PICK YOU UP AT 5, DADDY
.

Maybe it was a good thing that Bobo hadn’t replied. It was possible he hadn’t seen her
WHEN
, and therefore her new message could follow right behind it. Although this was unlikely. If he was anything like anyone else, he was punching his phone nonstop, sending messages flying at any opportunity. Still, he was an athlete. He couldn’t text on the field.

Carefully, slowly, she punched in another message for Bobo.
J-U-S-T K-I-D-D-I-N-G
. After obsessing for hours, “just kidding” was the best she could come up with. She slumped against the wall, exhausted. I am so uncreative, she thought. I’m practically a blob.

Afterward, studying in the library, she kept her phone clutched in her hand (risking another confiscation), praying for it to vibrate. “Sure,” she told Mrs. Dintenfass, and when Mrs. Dintenfass said, “I knew you would. I’ll put you down, then,” Sukie had no idea what Mrs. Dintenfass had asked her or what she was being put down for. Normally able to speed-read and retain twenty-five pages in ten minutes—she’d timed it with Mikey on the stopwatch—she found herself spacing out on a paragraph about epiparasites and
endoparasites, starting it again and again, retaining nothing.

Standing outside, waiting for her dad to get her, Sukie double-and triple-checked her phone. Was it working? Her skirt was off-kilter. The back zipper had moved all the way over to the side—it had a tendency to self-shift. Did her way of walking contribute to this? She hadn’t yet figured it out, but usually she kept better track of the problem. Finally she saw the flat top of the Bronco looming. She climbed into the backseat, letting Mikey have the front, a rarity. “Did Mom leave okay?”

“She forgot her Fiji water. She phoned from the car,” said her dad.

“What were you supposed to do about that?”

“Good question.”

“What about the building?”

“I’m waiting for them to counter.”

He launched into the drawbacks of adjustable versus fixed-rate mortgages. Sukie kept her eyes on her phone, hoping that a message would surface.
I’ll count to ten and then it will come.
Silently counting, she didn’t hear a word her dad said. “You’ve got a good business head,” he told her, pleased to fill the air with his knowledge, getting confused as he often did: His
daughter’s listening to his brilliance automatically conferred brilliance on her. Even though she wasn’t listening. She was barely giving the appearance of listening, but how could he know? He was driving and she was sitting behind him.

When they had parked and Mikey had raced ahead into Clementi’s Pizza Parlor, her dad said, “Good thing your mom isn’t here, she’d be all flipped out about the calories in mozzarella.”

“Omigod!” Sukie shrieked. “Cheese! I ate cheese!”

They laughed together, a cozy feeling.

“Should we tell her we ate here?”

“No,” said Sukie.

“Where should we say we ate?”

“At home. You cooked.”

“What did I make?” he asked.

“Tuna sandwiches.”

“Great. I like that.”

Sukie shook her head, letting her hair fluff out and settle. She did that when she felt especially good, as she did right now talking to her dad in a grown-up way, which gave her a momentary break from her agitation about Bobo and the sense, based on nothing except the security of being with her dad, that Bobo would text
her. Any minute now. He’d probably been at football practice.

“She drives me a little crazy,” said her dad.

“Me too,” said Sukie.

Her dad took out his money clip, refolded his bills, and clipped them again. He always did that when he was thinking.

“Maybe it will calm her down.”

“What?” said Sukie. “The spa?”

He opened the door to Clementi’s. “After you, Your Gorgeousness.”

Sukie loved walking into restaurants with her dad, because people glanced up and got stuck. Yes, up they glanced and then couldn’t tear their eyes away from Sukie’s tall, handsome dad, who oozed confidence. Sukie knew she was pretty striking too. A few of the lingering looks were directed at her. She imagined what people were thinking. “What perfect father-daughter specimens.” No. Something less scientific. Exactly what escaped her.

Isabella, the hostess, escorted them to a booth (never a table) and personally served Sukie’s dad his usual, Bombay on the rocks with a twist, checking with Sukie and Mikey about their orders. “Diet Coke
and Seven Up, right?”

“And three glasses of tap,” her dad added, which was the way he always ordered water.

Isabella even set up the little pizza stand. That was what they always had, the margherita.

“Move over, buddy,” her dad told Mikey so Isabella could join them for a minute. Issy had studied film at the New School in New York City and was working at Clementi’s while she considered her options. “I found a water bug in my kitchen as big as this.” She pointed to a dinner roll in the bread basket.

“Next time you’ve got a bug to kiss,” said Sukie’s dad, “call Mikey.”

“Me?” said Mikey. “I’m not kissing a bug.”

“Did I say kiss? I meant kill.”

“I’m not killing one either,” said Mikey.

Everyone laughed, even the people in the booth behind them.

“Do you like pepperoni?” Her dad addressed the table across the way. “I don’t know. I don’t get it.”

“Me either,” said the wife. “See, I’m not the only one.” She punched her husband in the arm.

The husband pretended to be injured and then offered Sukie’s dad some pickled peppers. Sukie’s dad
tried one and passed them on to the booth behind, and pretty soon he had all three tables in a three-way conversation about pizza toppings.

Sukie loved to watch her dad operate. That’s what he called it. Once at Cones, when he’d offered to pay for a woman’s sprinkles (a woman they’d never met before), the woman said to Sukie, “Your father makes everything more fun, doesn’t he?” As soon as they’d left the store, she reported the compliment to her dad, and he whispered (so her mom and Mikey couldn’t hear), “I’m a real operator.” Clearly this was information he could entrust only to Sukie.

Being a towering six feet four inches, he cocked his head down to listen, smiling as people told him stuff, as if their confidences cheered his heart. “Love it,” he said sometimes for no reason that Sukie could figure, simply because he was enjoying himself. “How’s your back, any better?” “What’d you do about the bee infestation?” “Did you quit your job?” “Still scuba diving?” Warren Jamieson remembered what people told him weeks, even months earlier.

“How’s Richie?” he asked.

Isabella sighed, “I may give up men.”

“Already?” said her dad.

“I’m twenty-two.”

“What happened?” asked Sukie.

“Oh, I don’t know. You know…” Issy scrunched up her face.

In Sukie’s opinion only a woman with an excellent bone structure like Isabella’s could scrunch up her face and still look cute. On the face description website, which Sukie had committed to memory, the worst bone structure was called “pudding” and the best was called “landscape.” Issy certainly had “landscape”: a determined line to her chin, sweet curves in her cheeks with hollows under them, a perfectly proportioned nose—“ski slope” made more flatteringly severe by a touch of “Greek.” Sukie sighed over the paleness of Issy’s skin. Only the barest blush of pink in her cheeks indicated that she was not dead, her complexion being nearly as white as the cameo Sukie had inherited from her great-aunt. Issy was small and delicate. “Drop me and I break,” she’d once laughed to Sukie and her dad, which Sukie thought was the cleverest way to talk about oneself. She’d tried the line in the mirror later. Since Sukie was tall and strong with arms and legs muscled from playing tennis, she had to admit that the line worked only if you had the looks to go with
it. Isabella’s short hair, currently dyed pink (the color changed frequently), hadn’t been chopped with hedge clippers, but if that had turned out to be true, no one would have been surprised. She stabbed it with clips. It stood up every which way.

Issy grabbed a lock of hair and reclipped it as she shivered over the memory of picking up a bottle of Coors and uncovering the giant bug. Her hands zigzagged as she recounted the bug’s skitter out of the kitchen and through her living room. Sukie became transfixed by Issy’s tiny wrists.

Her dad caught one of Isabella’s wrists. With his thumb and index finger he was able to circle it nearly twice. “You’re as tiny as a baby bird,” he said.

Sukie gasped. “I was just thinking that. That’s so weird. We were having exactly the same thought at the same time.”

Her dad smiled his famous smile. Sukie called it his famous smile because it was good enough to be on a can of peas or a box of oatmeal or a jar of popcorn, to name a few of the products Sukie had seen where a man’s smiling face assured you that this was the one to buy.