Beautiful (2 page)

I can hear my mom shuffling around in the living room. Something crashes and I hear her say “Shit.” Alex laughs but she does not look up.

“Why are you in those classes?” she says as she continues to flip through the photo album of the girls who were never my friends.

“What classes?”

“The ones for smart kids.” She pulls out a picture of Angela from back home, the most popular girl in school. Angela's wearing a cashmere sweater and skirt. Her hair is blond and perfect and she has a look on her face like anything is possible. I am suddenly embarrassed for her, embarrassed for her confidence and the sun shining on her hair, embarrassed for her soft pink skin. She has no idea there's a place like here, a place where she is nothing. There are a lot of photos of her in my album, taken at the sixth-grade picnic, at the school play when she was the star, at elementary school graduation. There are no pictures of me. I am always behind the camera. I am always somewhere no one can see me.

Alex tears the picture in half, then in half again. I think it
must be a joke, that it was only a piece of paper she tore. The picture must be somewhere still whole.

“Why'd you do that?” I ask her.

“I don't like her,” she answers, and I look in her hands, and Angela is torn into four jagged pieces. “Tell me why you're in the smart classes,” she says.

“I don't know.”

“Are you smart?” she says, like she's asking if I'm retarded.

“No. Yes. I don't know.” She is tearing the picture into even smaller pieces. She is looking at me while she does this, tearing slowly and smiling.

“Did your parents make you take those classes?”

“Yes,” I say, even though it's not really true, and the answer seems to satisfy her.

“I wish we had classes together,” she says, holding up another picture.

“Me too,” I say. I cannot look upset about the picture. I must act like I know it is funny. I must act like I care about nothing.

“Who's this?” she says.

“That's Leslie,” I tell her, and for some reason I add, “She's my best friend.” She wasn't as popular as Angela, but she was always my favorite. She was the nicest one in the group, not as rich as the others and kind of quiet. “We're at the sixth grade
picnic and we're at the beach on the weekend before the end of school and Derrick Jenson just kicked the ball into the water and—”

“Let's burn her,” Alex says.

“What?” She is crumpling up Leslie in her hand.

“Let's burn all of them. They're not your friends anymore, are they?”

“Why not?”

“You live here now.”

“We can still be friends.”

“No you can't. They're on
Bainbridge.
” She says the name of the island like I should be ashamed of it, like it's beneath her, like anything from there is not welcome here. And even though it's only on the other side of Seattle, I know that I will never go back. There is nothing there for me, nothing for my mother or father. There is a lake and land and salt water between us. There is a bridge and a ferryboat and trees and dirt roads. There is a whole other world with an entirely different version of me, a me that is not pretty, a me that no boys want, a me she would never talk to. The truth is far worse than she thinks. I am something worse than a preppy girl from an island. I am an ugly girl from an island. I am a girl who can't talk. I am a girl with a photo album full of people who don't even know who I am.

I don't want Alex seeing any more of the pictures. She is right. They are not real. They are not my life. This is my life now and it is better than the pretend one. Alex is better than Leslie and Angela and all the other girls who never existed as anything except snapshots taken in secret, backs walking away, distant echoes of giggles. They are gone. They do not exist. They never existed.

“I'm your friend now, right?” she says.

“Yes.”

“So you don't need them.”

“No.”

Alex tells me to tell my mom we're going for a walk. She puts the photo album in her backpack. Mom is putting framed pictures on top of the fake fireplace, the same ones that used to be on top of our old, real fireplace. There is a picture of her holding me as a baby when she was skinny and beautiful. There's one of my dad when he still had a beard, sitting in a big chair I don't recognize. There's one of all of us standing by the Christmas tree, my mom's hands on my shoulders with a big smile like she's the happiest she's ever been, like she doesn't even notice that I look scared and my dad looks angry like he always does.

We walk up the hill to the train tracks behind my apartment building. We can see Lake Washington and the whole
city from up here, but it looks different from when I saw it from the island. All of the buildings are backward.

We sit down on the train tracks and Alex hands me a lighter and says, “Burn them.” She starts tearing the pictures out of the album and handing them to me, one by one. I hold them in my hand, the girls I watched for years, the girls I dreamt of being, the good girls, the girls who will never know me. They are over water, through trees. They are not my friends. She is. Alex is. She is my only friend.

I am surprised how easily they burn, how quickly their faces turn to gray ash in my hands. When we are done, there is a pile of charred remains by my feet. They are ghosts of people I never knew, which the rain will wash away.

Alex throws the empty album into the bushes. The sun is starting to set and the bridge twinkles with commuters from Seattle. One of them could be my dad. But he's probably still at the office. I will probably not see him tonight.

“What time's your curfew?” Alex asks as she stands up.

“I don't really have one.” I don't tell her it's because I've never needed one. I don't tell her it's because I've never had anywhere to go.

“Do you have any money?” she says.

“Eight dollars.”

“That's good enough.”

• • •

We walk down the hill and along the waterfront where Canada geese are squawking and crapping on the grass. We walk past the burger place, where we can see families eating through the windows. “Look at those assholes,” Alex says.

I say, “Yeah.”

There's a store that sells supplies to make your own wine. There's a restaurant with a menu in the window, where the salads cost fifteen dollars. We walk past these places to the corner with the 7-Eleven and the video arcade. There are no families here. This is where the town ends. There are little boys inside the arcade. There are big boys outside.

“Most of them are high schoolers,” Alex tells me. They are smoking and drinking out of paper bags.

I have never done anything interesting in my life, but I am going to. I am going to be one of them. I am going to do things.

There's a fat guy sitting in the middle of the sidewalk with a rat crawling across his shoulders and down his back, over his lap and up his chest. It settles on top of his head and looks at us with the same beady eyes as the boy. The rat is purple like the fat boy's hair. It settles in like camouflage.

“Purple Haze,” says Alex.

“What do you want?” he says. His voice is high and nasal.

His face is greasy and pockmarked.

“Four hits,” she says, and I have no idea what she's talking about.

“Heard anything from your brother?” the fat boy says.

“He's in Portland.”

“I know that,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“He's got a good job.”

“No he doesn't.”

“Yes he does.”

“He's a junkie who lives in a warehouse and beats up fat people for fun,” the fat boy says, like it's the funniest thing he ever heard.

“No he doesn't.”

“He's in a gang against fat people.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“Classified information.”

“Give me a cigarette,” Alex says.

“Only if your friend will kiss me.”

She looks at me. I shake my head.

“Just give me a cigarette.”

He pulls one out and hands it to me. “My dear,” he says, and offers to light it. I put it in my mouth and suck like I've seen my mom do.

“Can we have the acid now?” says Alex.

“Do you have money?”

“She does.”

He looks me up and down and the fat under his chin wiggles like Jell-O. “I'll give it to you for free if you two make out,” he says, and the smoke from the cigarette goes too far into my lungs and I start coughing.

“I'm not a dyke, fucker,” says Alex.

“She's not inhaling,” says Purple Haze, and points at me.

“What?”

“Your pretty friend. She doesn't know how to smoke.”

Alex looks at me like I've done something terrible. I hand her the cigarette, and my face burns.

“Look, she's blushing,” says Purple Haze. “Isn't that cute.”

“Just give us the acid,” Alex says, exhaling smoke like she knows what she's doing. Everyone is watching. I know they're thinking about what a fool I am. They're thinking I don't belong here. They're thinking,
Go back where you came from, little girl.

“Have you ever taken a shit that was so good it was better than an orgasm?” says Purple Haze. “Like those really fat long ones that last forever and it feels like you lost like ten pounds?”

“Give him the money,” Alex says to me. I open my purse and take out my wallet. My hands are shaking.

“Easy, girl. Sit here next to me.”

I look at Alex. She nods.

I sit down even though my skirt is short. I put my purse in my lap to hide the place that is not covered. Purple Haze leans over and whispers in my ear, “Take it out slowly and reach over and put it in my pocket.” I do what he says. His jeans are too warm and slightly moist. He smells like salami.

From his other pocket, he pulls out a makeup compact. He takes out two tiny cellophane packets with his fat fingers and puts them in my hand. “Have a nice trip, ladies.” I stand up and dust off my skirt. I am trying not to shake. They're thinking,
Go home, little girl.
I don't look at Alex or Purple Haze as I start walking. I don't look at any of the high school boys even though their eyes burn holes into me.
Go home.

“She doesn't talk much,” I hear Purple Haze say behind me, even though I'm already halfway down the block.

“Wait!” yells Alex. I keep walking. I am still too close. If I stop walking, I will start crying and everyone will see me.

“What's your problem?” she says when she catches up to me.

“I just wanted to leave.”

“You have to wait for me,” she says.

“I'm sorry.”

She stops walking and so do I. She is looking me in the eyes. She is looking at me like she hates me. “Don't do it again,” she says. Her voice is hard, not like a girl's. I look at
the ground and feel my body crumbling, turning into small, invisible pieces.

“Sorry,” I say. I look up and expect her to be gone, but she is still there, smiling like nothing happened. I am solid again. She takes my hand and pulls it gently.

“Let's go in here,” she says.

We slide between a closed boutique and a fancy cheese store. In the shadows Alex says, “Where's the acid?” I hold out my hand with the two little cellophane packets. “You take one and I'll take two.” She opens a packet and licks it. The two tiny white paper squares stick to her tongue. She opens the second packet and presses her finger inside. One square sticks and she points it at me. “Here,” she says.

“What?” I say.

“Eat it.”

I lick her finger and it is salty.

“Am I supposed to swallow it?”

“Just let it dissolve.”

“Where are we going now?”

“James's house.”

I say “Shit,” and it sounds ridiculous coming out of my mouth.

“You look good,” Alex says. “Don't worry. He already wants you.”

She walks fast and I try to keep up, but I am dizzy with “he wants you.” It is good that she's so far ahead, that she can't see the stupid smile on my face.

“It's only about a mile,” she says, and we don't talk until we get there.

We walk along the lake, on the sidewalk made for joggers and mothers with strollers. It's strange how different the shore is here, all perfect and straight. Instead of sharp rocks, instead of seaweed and barnacles and other live things, this beach is flat and sandy and barren, marked only with goose crap and the occasional piece of litter.

Here I am with the first friend I've had in forever. Here I am on my way to meet a boy who wants me. My life on the island is over. I have a new face and a new body and new clothes. I have a new friend and nothing will ever be the same again.

James's house is in a development full of mansions, down the hill from my apartment building, on the lake where the big houses stare at Seattle, brand-new with naked dirt yards no one's had time to plant anything in.

The shadows that cling to the side of the house start moving and I can't tell if I see James or darkness shaped like him. It feels like the ground is breathing and the air has hands, like everything is moving except me, like I am the only thing solid, like it is the rest of the world that is dizzy.

I say, “I feel weird.”

Alex says, “It's working.”

“Hi,” James says, and he looks at me like he's a movie star.
Something is off about the way he leans against the house, like his hips are out of joint, like his body is overextended and struggling to stay upright. He's wearing a plain black sweatshirt, a baseball hat over his mohawk. He could be anyone right now. He could be normal, anonymous. I start laughing because suddenly he doesn't seem so tough. I laugh because suddenly everything's colored like a cartoon. I laugh because it's the only thing to do when your legs give up and you fall on the ground, when you're an idiot and you know you're an idiot and everyone around you is an idiot and there's nothing you can do about it.