Makeover
Hannah Maureen Holden
My mother craned over her steering wheel and narrowed her eyes at the students trudging across the school crosswalk. “That's not your friend Melody, is it?” Melody was skinny as a wraith in ripped, black clothes, and her scalp shone through the outgrowth of hair on her shaved head. A silver ring glinted in her septum.
I folded my arms over my chest. “Yes, mom. And we haven't been friends since fifth grade.”
“Maybe for the best,” she said.
A photo of Melody and me at the beach in our matching cat shirts was still on display in the entryway of my house. She was gangly and pale, her lips blue at the edges from swimming in the Pacific, my chubby arm wrapped around her shoulders. Looking at the photo brought back the sound of our sandals slapping against the boardwalk. I could almost taste the Neapolitan ice cream, buttered popcorn, and salt water taffy we worked our jaws on during the drive home. I remembered feeling bored and lonely when Melody's family moved away from our cul-de-sac to a newer, better neighborhood.
My mother pulled up to the curb. “I'm showing a house in the Willows this afternoon. There's cash on the counter for pizza.” Mom usually didn't take listings in less expensive neighborhoods like the Willows but for months now we were short of money: the dark roots of her hair were growing in and, for the first time in my life, I saw a chip in her signature fuchsia manicure.
Geometry class was held on the outskirts of campus in a portable trailer. The bell rang as we waited for maintenance to bring our teacher a key. Scratcher, our resident troublemaker with a reputation for swapping stolen iPods for pot, bounced on the ramp, shaking the flimsy russet sheet metal we stood on. The meaning of his nickname remained opaque to me until the following summer, when Melody unwrapped cling film from my thigh to reveal inflamed skin and a shaky tattoo of a swallow.
Melody's MySpace showed photos of her decked out like a candy raver in a dark, foggy room; kissing a boy against a highway underpass; reclining by a pool, a cigarette dangling from her hand. I sat on my bed in the dark, hunched over my laptop, my stomach heavy with envy and shame. I was a straight-A suck up, overweight, excited by the smell of pencil shavings. Like my English teacher wrote in the margins of my essays, I was "awk." If I hadn’t been in a competitive public school with a student body several thousand nerds deep, I probably would have been bullied. Instead I was left alone on the periphery of the social world, stalking MySpace for visions of how I wanted to live.
Melody chose me to be her geometry partner for our first project, but she slipped away from class without talking to me about it. Then, the day before it was due, she asked me, "What grade are we gonna get?"
“I haven't started,” I said. “I need your help.”
“I thought you were smart,” she said.
“We could work on it at the park by my house.”
As we walked to the park after school, I explained how we could calculate the radius of the jungle gym and the area of a sandbox.
“You get math,” Melody said. “You sure you need my help?”
I took her through my house into the garage and asked her to grab a tape measure from a shelf that I was too short to reach. On the way out the front door, she stopped at the photo of us. She wrapped her delicate fingers around the frame and lifted it.
“Remember how we used to tell people we were sisters?” she said.
“Yeah," I said. “Good thing we were practically identical.”
She snorted and set the photo down.
We walked to the park, where two boys were waiting for Melody with skateboards under their arms. It was Scratcher and Austin—Melody's ex. Rangy and tanned, Austin had a loping, graceful gait that made my stomach flip.
“Check out my new deck.” Scratcher flipped his skateboard so that Melody and I could see the design, an illustration of a yearling with bloody, shredded velvet dangling from its antlers.
“Melody drew this,” Scratcher said to me.
“She's mad skilled,” Austin said. I agreed, struck by how the deer's placid expression and white-dappled fur contrasted with its gory horns. I envied her talent and Austin's admiration. Did he still like her?
“How many cars did you have to break into to buy this?” Melody asked.
“It's not breaking in if the doors aren’t locked,” Scratcher said. “Wanna try it out, Mels?”
The three of them walked to a smooth pathway. I followed a few feet behind, insecure about whether I was welcome. Scratcher set down his board and Melody stepped on. Austin pushed her as she whooped and stuck out her arms for balance.
“Do an ollie, Melody!” Scratcher said, jogging behind. I placed one foot on Austin's skateboard and pushed it back and forth, but as I stepped on, the board flew out from under my feet. I fell backwards and hit the pavement.
“Nice granny panties,” Austin said, retrieving his board.
I pulled my skirt down.
“Don't be a dick, Austin,” Melody said. She helped me to my feet. I bit my lip to keep from crying.
“Shit, your elbows,” Scratcher said. I twisted my arms to look.
“Just some scrapes,” I said, although seeing the blood made me feel their sting. An old, sunburned man in the handball court stared at us through his wraparound sunglasses.
“Creeper,” Melody said. “We should go back to your place.”
Scratcher and Austin looked pained by the thought of spending more time with me.
“Her mom isn't home,” Melody said. The boys perked up.
I picked up the tape measure from the pavement and led them across the street into my backyard. Melody’s expression said it all. I felt ashamed of the weed-choked lawn, the lemons rotting at the roots of the tree, the neglected gazebo with a moldering roof. My mother had to let the gardener go when her listings started idling on the market. We settled in the gazebo. Austin rummaged through his backpack, took out a pack of cigarettes and tossed it to Melody.
“You're lucky you're eighteen,” Melody said.
“That's a special pack,” he said.
Melody opened the pack and pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette. “Fuck, dude,” she said. “It's been a minute.”
“I know, they got you on that twelve-step shit.”
“I'm over it.” She pulled a lighter from her back pocket, lit the cigarette, and inhaled deeply. “Want a hit?”
I had never smoked before, so I aped Melody's drawn-out inhalation and exhalation, with a pause in between.
A heaviness settled into the air and in my limbs. I felt a pleasant, mammalian warmth radiating from the other bodies in the gazebo.
“Shit, now she's even quieter,” Austin said. It took a moment before I looked up and realized that he was talking about me.
“Cottonmouth?” Melody asked, pulling a bottle of orange juice from her backpack. I unscrewed the cap and drank, shuddering at the biting aftertaste.
“I think that’s more than Juicy-Juice,” Scratcher said. We took turns swigging from the bottle until it was empty.
Melody stood, swaying slightly, wandered out of the gazebo and threw the plastic bottle over the fence into the neighbor's yard. I hopped over the gazebo bannister, picked a lemon from the ground, and flung it over the fence. Scratcher and Austin joined in, throwing their lemons into the neighbor’s jacuzzi. Scratcher staggered away to urinate on a tree. I stumbled over a tree root and fell. Austin lifted me to my feet and I felt my cheeks burning. The repressive force that prevented me from acting in the world lifted for a moment. Maybe for good, I thought. We sloshed out of my backyard and into Austin's boxy Honda. Melody sat in the front seat, propped her Vans on the dashboard, and connected her iPod to the speakers. She played "Evil" by Interpol, a song I recognized from her MySpace page. She knew a lot of cool music from going to concerts in L.A. I spent my summer volunteering at the no-kill animal shelter, hosing down mud for two pot belly pigs and entering numbers into spreadsheets. That August I memorized every song in the mix on K-Earth 101, the oldies station coming from the desk radio of my 76-year-old co-volunteer. Between pouring kibble twice a day, she was knitting an afghan which she gave to me my last day on the job.
Scratcher and I sat in the backseat of the van, separated by a gym bag that reeked of chlorine and mildew. I stared at the back of Austin's tanned neck and imagined him toweling off after water polo.
As Austin pulled up in front of a CVS, I felt a flare of anxiety—would Melody and I ever buckle down and do our assignment? Who was I kidding? At this point anything I wrote would probably swim around the page.
“Here's the plan,” Melody said, twisting around in her seat to look at me. “This store sells alcohol in both handles and boxes. The handles have sensors but the boxes don't. You can take one off the shelf and just walk out with it. Me and Austin have been doing this since they first put out the boxes, so the security guards know us. Scratcher’s on probation so he can't do it. Get me some vodka.”
“Okay,” I said, so stoned I was melting into the upholstery.
I was baffled by the distinction between handles and boxes but unwilling to reveal my ignorance. I picked up that I was being used, but also tested. I slid out of the van and dragged myself to the automatic sliding door of the CVS. I had no idea where vodka would be. First I checked the refrigerated section, pausing to appreciate the cold on my face and the resplendent beauty of the red foil caps on the yogurt cups.
I wove through the shelves of trail mix, chips, and juice boxes until I found myself among towers of liquor. I reached for a bottle of vodka. A wire and sensor were looped through its handle. Oh, a handle, I thought. Next to the handles were gift boxes that contained both a bottle of alcohol and shot glasses. I zipped the most expensive box into my backpack and speed-walked through the store.
As I reached the door, the security alarm went off. I could see Austin and Melody through the car windshield, their eyes wide. A young guy in a CVS shirt ran out from behind the register and grabbed the straps of my backpack. My heart sank as I heard him unzip the bag. But as the doors slid open with a blast of hot October air, Melody and Scratcher shoved the CVS worker and ran past him.
“Hey, Bernard!” Scratcher said. He ripped candy and magazines from the shelves and threw them into the air.
“Miss us, Bernie?” Melody whooped and laughed as she knocked Halloween decorations off the shelves. Plastic jack-o-lanterns rolled down the aisle. She ripped open a massive bag of candy corn with her teeth and dumped the contents.
“Christ!” Bernard said, releasing his grip on me. “Don't move!”
Melody and Scratcher disappeared into the center of the store, howling and knocking over more merchandise. Bernard ran into the labyrinth after them. I looked toward the parking lot and saw Austin behind the steering wheel, gesturing at me to hurry. I ran out of the store and jumped into the backseat of the van. Moments later, Melody and Scratcher ran from the store and dived in.
“Drive!” Melody said as she slammed the door. Austin peeled out of the parking lot and blew the stop sign as he pulled back onto Culver.
Melody, breathless, twisted around in her seat to look at me.
“What did you get?”
I pulled out the box of Grey Goose.
“Fuck yeah!” she said. “Here, take this.”
She gave me two bottles of black nail polish, red lipstick, and a box of magenta hair dye. Scratcher ripped open a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and clawed them into his mouth.
“Thanks for having my back,” I said.
“It's cool,” Melody said. “I missed fucking with that freak.”
She tore open the box, frowning as she showed me a square silver sticker on the base.
“I forgot,” Melody said. “You have to scrape this off to get past the alarms.”
She took a swig from the bottle and handed it to me. I plugged my nose while I drank, the burn in my throat making my eyes water. Melody laughed.
Austin drove to Woodbridge, a shopping center perched on a hill overlooking a stagnant trickle of water—the San Diego Creek. I didn’t recognize the pack of scene kids and hippies gathered there. We spilled out of the van. Scratcher climbed into a dumpster to retrieve a flattened shipping box. This was Cardboard Hill, I realized, a place I had overheard Scratcher and Melody mythologize while we were supposed to be labeling triangles as acute, obtuse, or right. Scratcher placed the box at the edge of the slope and sledded down the hill. Melody cheered.
I began to feel sick and wandered away. I sat down behind a tree and leaned my head against its trunk. The horizon was spinning. I felt pressure on my leg. Austin had sat next to me and was lifting my skirt. He looked up at me, glassy-eyed, even more messed up than I was. So that's what it took for a boy to want to touch me, I thought: obliteration. He leaned in to kiss me. I pulled away, dug my head into his shoulder, and shut my eyes. He ran his hand slowly over my bra—two generous scoops of padding that concealed my flat chest. I pushed his hand away.
“Get off her, pervert!” Melody grabbed Austin by the shoulders and said, “Scratcher! Get your friend!”
***
In the last hour of daylight, I woke up alone in the grass. Someone had tossed my backpack a few feet from my body. I lifted myself from the grass and brushed the dirt from my backpack. I wanted to listen to Death Cab for Cutie during the long walk home, but when I unzipped my backpack to get my iPod, it was gone.
I got home to find my mother sitting on the couch, soaking her feet in a plastic basin.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“The pizza,” she said. “You didn't order.”
“Yeah, I had to work on a group project with Melody. She's bad at math, so it took a long time.” I hoped there weren't pieces of grass stuck in my hair.
“I thought stoners got the munchies.”
“What?”
She took her feet out of the tub and stood, soaking the carpet under her bare feet. She picked up something from the table and walked over to me. She waved the stubbed out spliff in my face.
“I don't know what that is,” I said.
“Don't play games with me. I spend all day working and come home to this. The neighbors said they found lemons in their jacuzzi, and now one of the pumps is broken. Where are we going to get the money to replace that?”
“Mom, I didn’t—”
“I'm humiliated. And you reek of alcohol.”
“I was working on my geometry homework, Mom!”
“I don't know what I'm doing wrong.”
Ignoring the tears in my mother’s eyes, I stomped upstairs and slammed the door. I shrugged off my backpack, took off my shoes and threw them against the wall. I fell onto my bed, pulled the afghan over me, and slept in my clothes.
My mother and I usually talked on the car ride to school, but the next morning we said nothing as I scribbled what I hoped was a convincingly probable angle between an imaginary swing set and picnic bench. My head thrummed as I chewed on my braid.
I slammed the car door and dragged myself to the trailers. I was surprised to see most of my classmates carrying elaborate presentation boards. With one trembling hand I crumpled the sheet of paper I held into a ball.
“Where's the presentation you were supposed to make?” Melody asked, her nostrils flaring.
“I forgot—I didn’t know—”
“I thought you were supposed to be fucking smart. I can't fail this shit again!”
“Fuck off, Melody,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up. She took a deep breath and put her hands on my shoulders. “Walk with me and don't look back.”
We pushed through our classmates and walked toward the main campus. My eyes averted my Latin teacher as he shut his classroom door. Melody and I kept walking through the parking lot, off campus, and uphill into the closest neighborhood.
“Melody, where are we going?”
“We can't walk down Culver, that's where the truancy officers look for me.”
“So, we're—”
“Skipping school.”
A thrill of excitement ran up my spine, tailed by guilt.
“We'll say we were sick and turn in the project tomorrow. I also have a test in Language Arts, so it's a win-win.”
“That's not what a win-win means,” I said.
“Shit like that's why I'm fucking up in Language Arts. I'm sorry I left you like that yesterday,” she said.
“What happened?” My voice cracked.
“Austin was hammered and said he was going to drive Scratcher to Santa Ana. I got our shit out of the car, and was like, whatever. Then I thought, what if he kills someone? I fought him for his keys and threw them into the creek. The security people came in their golf cart and drove us off of mall property. They think they're the fucking cops. I walked back to Cardboard Hill to get you, but you left.”
“Oh,” I said. “Did you see my iPod in the van?”
“Damn it—Scratcher! Let’s kick that klepto’s ass after school.”
“Melody, can we please just do our homework?”
“We can go to my house.”
We walked to Melody’s house, a Spanish style two-story with a red tile roof. She kicked a pile of dirty laundry out of the way as we walked into her bedroom. Her vanity was crammed with makeup and lotion bottles.
“I can't believe you’ve never been to my new house. Hey,” Melody said, grabbing the pilfered box of magenta hair dye from her vanity. “What do you think?”
I sat on the tile floor of her bathroom. She undid my braid and combed dark gloop through my hair, staining the white towel wrapped around my neck. The dye's noxious odor made me dizzy. Elsewhere in the house, an infant wailed.
“Sorry,” Melody said. “My brother.”
Melody had never mentioned having a brother. So that's how she gets away with it, I thought. Her parents were too preoccupied with the baby to notice the automated voicemails reporting her truancy, the water-diluted bottles of vodka in the liquor cabinet, or the white lines on her wrists that showed when her sleeves bunched up.
“Don't look until it's dry,” she said, “so you can see the actual color.”
Melody opened her closet and pulled out markers and a battered presentation board. One side of the board illustrated what happens when potato meets galvanized nail—a science project from the fourth grade. On the blank side she drew a winding slide, sandcastles, and an empty swing set animated by a breeze. I drew tidy vertical and horizontal lines alongside and labeled them with fake dimensions.
“Was that your first kiss, at Cardboard Hill?” she asked.
“No," I said. “There was a boy I met on a cruise.”
“You think Austin likes you?”
“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe?”
“He's a psycho, I'm warning you.”
Melody grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped the ends of my damp hair. “Split ends,” she said. She took a fistful of hair near my face and cut. A hefty length of hair fell into my lap. She grasped another section and snipped again.
“Please leave it long enough to put into a braid,” I begged.
“You're gonna look cool, I promise.”
Lengths of pink hair fell from my lap as I stood to look at my reflection. I ran my trembling hands over the jagged ends that barely brushed my shoulders.
“I don't look like me anymore,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “You look like me.”
***
That winter, our house went into foreclosure and my mother and I moved into a two-bedroom condo. The rent was outrageous but it was the most affordable option in the school district. I begged for a vanity, but once we put in the bed and dresser, there was no room left. I hung fairy lights around the window and put the picture of Melody and me at the beach on top of the dresser.
A few weeks before graduation, my mother and I sat in the school counselor’s office to discuss whether I should be allowed to walk in the commencement ceremony. My ruinous GPA meant I would have to attend summer school to earn my diploma.
“Things went downhill after the move,” my mother said. “Plus the divorce when she was in elementary school. It was just too much.”
“That's one way of looking at it,” the counselor said, unmoved.
Since my mother reminded me daily that I was lazy and wasting my talents, her generous interpretation of events surprised me. Probably a way to save face.
Hanging in the air unspoken was the occasion when the counselor happened upon Melody and me pouring vodka into our Slurpees in the 7-11 parking lot when we were supposed to be serving our in-school suspensions.
He turned to me. “What do you think caused all this?”
I tugged the hem of my skirt to conceal my tattoo, remembering how Melody gasped when she unwrapped the plastic to look at it the first time. She had put her right leg next to my left. Her spindly, pale leg was covered in thumb-sized bruises and cigarette burns. My leg was tan and strong and unmarked, but we shared matching tattoos of sparrows with ribbons in their beaks, bearing the words: Semper sorores.
Hannah Maureen Holden
Hannah Maureen Holden is a writer and editor living in New York City. She holds a BFA in Writing from Pratt Institute. Her short fiction has appeared in The Ear and Ubiquitous. She is originally from Irvine, California. You can find her at hannah-holden.com.