3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (12 page)

“That’s fine. I don’t mind.” The gears in Jo’s brain started to turn.

“You could stay next door,” her mother said hopefully. “Jeannie said she’d be delighted to have you.”

Jeannie next door had twin four-year- old boys. Jo knew she’d spend any free time there babysitting. But if she stayed here … well, there was Zach. There were Bryn and the group at the restaurant. There was no curfew. There were endless intriguing possibilities.

“I can stay here,” Jo said. “It’s fine. Jeannie s right next door if I need anything.”

Her mother looked uncertain. She wanted this to -work. She didn’t want to run into any obstruction from Jo, and Jo knew it.

“Seriously, Mom. It’s no problem. We’ve got Jeannie on one side and Mrs. Gluck on the other. She never goes anywhere.”

Her mom nodded slowly. “Do you really think you’d be all right?”

“Of course. You’ll have your phone, I’ll have mine. You’ll only be a couple hours away. I won’t use the stove. What could happen?”

Her mom really wanted to go. “Well. Maybe. I don’t know. Do you think you should talk to your dad about it?”

Jo breathed out in impatience. “Mom, do you really think Dad would care?”

Gia was one of the earliest supermodels and probably the most tragic, Polly concluded after extensive research online. Cindy Crawford was one of Polly’s favorites because she had been her high school’s valedictorian and studied engineering at Northwestern University.

Polly stood up from her computer and wandered into the bathroom. She climbed up onto the sink to take a look at her backside in the tall mirror. Had it gotten any smaller? According to the digital scale at Wallman’s drugstore yesterday, she’d lost six and a half pounds.

Polly thought about her research. She especially liked Iman, because Iman -was from Africa, like Ama. In fact, Iman looked like Ama, or at least the way Polly imagined Ama would look -when she got older. Christy Turlington practiced yoga, -which Polly respected, and Heidi Klum had a good head for business and had started her own TV show.

Polly turned to look at herself from the front. She was getting pretty good at dieting, she realized. She was pretty pleased with herself for that. A lot of the models she’d been reading about took diet pills or illegal drugs or smoked cigarettes to stay thin. Polly was glad she wouldn’t have to resort to those measures.

One thing that made it easier -was that Polly ate a lot of her meals by herself, so if she skipped them, no one really noticed. She pictured Amas family around the dinner table every night. There was no way you could skip dinner if you were Ama. Not that Ama wanted to skip any dinners. Unlike Polly, Ama was naturally thin to begin -with.

Polly had hoped to lose three and a half more pounds before she went to camp, but she’d read an article online that said that you could stunt your growth if you didn’t eat enough. Was it more important to be thin or tall?

Kate Moss was harder to warm up to, Polly found. She was the current subject of Polly’s research. You couldn’t do a thorough study of models without Kate Moss, and though Kate Moss was exceptionally beautiful she was also the mother of a young daughter. When Polly looked at the pictures online of Kate Moss partying -with crazy, druggy rock stars, she couldn’t help thinking of the daughter.

Polly’s stomach looked flat and her -waist was small, but her hips and butt looked no different. Her face was thinner and her cheekbones stuck out more, but her bra fit just the same.

When she went into her room to get dressed, she still felt ungainly in her jean shorts. She still stooped selfconsciously in her tank top. She still suffered the same old frustration at Dia for not coming home when she said she would. She still replayed the words that Jo had said to Bryn in Rehoboth Beach, as hard as she tried not to.

Polly was pretty good at dieting, all right, but she was beginning to wonder -whether you ever lost the parts of yourself you -wanted to lose.

•••

“I totally love those socks,” Carly gushed. “Do they have the separate toes? I had some like that once, but the dryer ate one of them.”

Ama nodded grimly at Carly as they reassembled their tent two nights later.

“I’m always buying new socks, aren’t you?” Carly nattered on. “For a while I stopped wearing them, but my running shoes really started to stink.” Carly laughed at her own hilarity, and Ama used what weight she had to drive a corner post into the ground.

“Then I decided to get all the same kind, so it doesn’t matter if you lose one, you know?”

Ama didn’t know. Amas mother -washed clothes with such care that she almost never lost their socks. But Ama remained silent. It didn’t seem to bother Carly, nor did she even seem to notice that Ama wasn’t answering her and hadn’t answered her in three days, since the episode with Noah.

When Ama next looked up, the tent was done. As much as Carly talked, she was a remarkably efficient tent assembler.

“I’m starving,” Carly declared, heading off to join the dinner-making team.

Ama wandered around alone, examining the anthills on either side of her. She’d become well versed in ants, both red and black, and did a good job of not setting up their tent on top of any.

She didn’t want to join the dinner group, because she didn’t want to watch Carly flirting -with Noah again. She’d spent too much time over the last three days obsessing about whether Carly and Noah -were sneaking off together, and also avoiding any opportunity to find out.

Did Carly need to have all the boys? Every last one? Could she leave one for anyone else?

What if’ she did leave one for me? Ama asked herself fitfully. What would I do about it? Would I talk to him? Would I sit next to him? Would I even stay put for two minutes when he sat next to me? Nothing, no, no, and no. Why shouldn’t Carly have Noah, too? Carly had enough for all of them, -whereas Ama didn’t have anything for anyone.

That night was cold. Ama lay shivering in her sleeping bag, alternating between fretting about the rappel and fretting about Carly and Noah. This was interrupted when Carly arrived at the entrance to the tent.

Ama immediately pretended to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk to her, and again it was a miscalculation. Like she had on that first night, Carly brought a guest.

Was it Noah? Ama couldn’t move. She opened one eye for a fraction of a second and saw the dark, straight hair. It was Noah! She waited to hear his voice as the two of them crowded into the little tent. She didn’t dare turn her head.

Was it definitely him? He didn’t say anything. In mortification she listened to Carly’s whispers and giggles. And then she listened to the unmistakable sound of kissing.

This was too much! She couldn’t take it.

In a fit of anger and jealousy mixed with a few parts humiliation, Ama gathered her sleeping bag around herself and unzipped the entrance with hurried, shaking hands. She grabbed her pack and crashed out of the tent. She tried to walk in her sleeping bag, but she couldn’t. She stumbled and tripped, dropped her pack, and clumsily fought for her balance.

“Oops. I guess she wasn’t asleep,” she heard Carly say from inside the tent.

“I guess not,” the boy—Noah?—answered.

They whispered and laughed and Ama needed desperately to get away. She couldn’t stay there for as long as it would take to get out of her sleeping bag, so she started hopping. It was a hard combination, anger and hopping. She felt ridiculous. But it was impossible, she knew, to feel more ridiculous than she looked.

She hopped to the edge of the campsite. She wanted to make a statement with her anger. She heard a far-off animal sound. But not that big a statement. She didn’t want to die.

She slumped over and thought for a moment. She carefully stowed her pack under a clump of dense shrubbery so her stuff wouldn’t get too wet if it rained in the night. She stretched out and nestled down, down into her sleeping bag so her head was all the way in.

It was like her own little tiny tent, with no slutty tent mates and no disappointing boys in it. I love you, sleeping bag, she thought. Who needed boys or good grades or even self-respect when you had your own little tiny tent? Maybe she had been born a tortoise in another life.

If I never came out, I think I might be happy, she told herself. She imagined there were rooms and corridors down in her sleeping bag and lots of objects to keep her company. She was like Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street, -whom she used to watch sometimes in Ghana. Space magically released Oscar from its normal rules and allowed him to have lots of room and plenty of objects inside his little aluminum garbage can. Maybe that was how her sleeping bag could be.

And with that in her mind, Amas thoughts went along in their pretty unweaving toward sleep.

“I could change it. I don’t mind,” Polly said to Ms. Miller, the hair and makeup teacher at modeling camp, -who stood shaking her head at Polly’s hair.

“I’m thinking extensions,” the woman said. “What about the color?”

Polly peered at herself in the mirror. “What about it?”

“It’s natural?”

“Um. Yes.”

“It’s so severe. So dark.”

“I could lighten it?” Polly said tentatively. She wondered what her mother-would have to say about that. Her mother was all for hair dye, but only if it was black or pink or green or blue. Blond would not sit well with Dia. As Polly looked around the class, she recognized that she was both the oldest and by far the least blond. Probably not all of the girls came that way naturally.

That was one thing that surprised Polly about modeling camp. Although the brochure said ages nine to sixteen, Polly, at fourteen, -was fully two years older than the next-oldest camper.

Another thing -was that the camp -was situated right near the parking lot of a large shopping mall, and it turned out that the curriculum involved a lot of supervised shopping. Polly had not been expecting -woods on a lake and tents and canoes, exactly, but she hadn’t been expecting a parking lot and a mall, either.

The shopping -was a problem for one thing because she didn’t like shopping and for another thing because she had spent every dollar she had earned babysitting on getting to the camp in the first place. That didn’t leave any budget for shopping or the camp snack bar. Which -was probably just as well, because she still had two pounds to lose.

Which led her to another of the things she was surprised about. For a bunch of girls who aspired to be models, they sure did spend a lot of time in the snack bar.

During the free periods in the middle of the day, while the other girls sat in the snack bar and watched TV Polly sat in the classroom and continued her research on famous models. She knew she should be making more of an effort to get some friends, but she was selfconscious about being older and she knew she was different.

Anyway, it was easier for her to spend time among super models rather than -with actual girls who only hoped for the things the supermodels already had, and with -whom the conversation -was supposed to go both -ways.

Jo put on her favorite shorts and wore her hair down for her shift that night, hoping to make herself feel better. She wanted badly to see Zach. When she saw him all her regular, slow thoughts retreated and new, darting thoughts took over, and today that seemed like it would be a good thing.

When she spotted him in the dining area, she went over to him and put her hand briefly in his back pocket. “Hi, Zach.”

She wanted him to kiss her, just a tiny one. That was the one thing she had been focusing on for the last twelve hours, but he was rushing to the kitchen to put in his first order.

Zach, Zach, Zach, Zach, Zach. Now that she knew his name she did enjoy saying it. Are you my boyfriend? Are you, Zach, my boyfriend?

During her break, she hung out in the back -with the other girls as they smoked and text-messaged, their fingers a blur. She felt like she was one of them now, minus the cigarettes. Jo recognized a new girl she’d spotted several times over the course of the night.

“Is this your first shift?” Jo asked her.

“This summer, yeah,” the girl said. “I worked here last August.”

She was probably seventeen or eighteen, Jo guessed, but she looked older. She wore the standard-issue Surfside T-shirt, but she filled it out in a way that Jo did not. She had luxurious dark hair, good tanning skin, and a substantial nose. She was striking, more sexy than pretty.

“I’m Jo,” Jo said. “Are you from D.C.?”

“Bethesda. What about you?”

“Same,” Jo said. “Where do you go to school?”

“South Bethesda. I’m a senior.”

Jo nodded, feeling very young and small. She decided not to say that was where she went too. She wanted this girl to see her as a fellow waitress (sort of) with a boyfriend, and not as just a measly high school freshman.

“Are you bussing?” the girl asked somewhat dismis-sively, looking around in her purse for something.

“Yeah,” Jo said. She wanted this girl to know that she wasn’t just some little hanger-on, that she was part of the group. She was the girlfriend of the hands-down hottest guy in the place. She was a busser, yes, but she had stature here, even -with the waiters.

The girl applied some gloss to her lips, swung her purse over her shoulder, and headed back into the restaurant.

“Hey, Effie, hold up,” Violet called after her.

Jo, feeling pale and extra-freckly, -walked back to the dishwashing station -with as much dignity as possible. She thought about the night ahead. When Zach popped up at the end of the shift, as he inevitably -would, and -wanted to take her down to the beach and kiss her, she -would go for it. Not like she hadn’t before, but this time -would be different. She -was ready to have a real boyfriend now. She knew the value of a guy like Zach, and she didn’t -want to mess it up.

By ten-fifteen all but one party of diners had left and Jo -was cleaning and setting up tables for the following day. She looked around to catch Zach’s eye, but he -wasn’t anywhere in the dining area.

Bryn -wheeled the silverware cart over. “I heard Zach’s girlfriend from last summer is back,” she announced in a stage -whisper.

“What are you talking about?”