Fix

by Leslie Margolis

  “Sorry,” said Cameron, watching as the stain spread out over the terra-cotta tile. It wasn’t as if there would be permanent damage, but it still felt humiliating.

  Leave it to Ashlin to try and make friends. “Anyone want a drink?” she asked. “The margaritas are amazing. They’re totally the Platonic ideal.”

  Nikki glanced at Ashlin quizzically. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just nod and go along with whatever she says,” Hadley advised. “That’s what we do when she talks about Roman philosophers.”

  “Greek,” Ashlin corrected her.

  Hadley flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Whatever.”

  Alexis, never a shy one, shrugged and said, “Okay. I’ll have a Corona.”

  “Me too,” said Keisha.

  Nikki helped herself to a margarita. “Platon was right,” she said. “These are delicious.”

  Lucy came back with a wet dishcloth and tossed it to Cameron.

  Suddenly, everything was normal. They were just hanging out, talking, and even laughing. Cameron soaked up the drink. Watching the redness seep into the white rag, she tried to pretend these girls were strangers. You can do this, she said to herself, but not very convincingly. Her hands were shaking, and she noticed a chip in her nail polish. Suddenly the padding in her bathing suit top seemed way too obvious. Was Nikki still staring at her? Cameron peeked and then quickly looked away. Nikki was still staring.

  Braden sat down next to her and started talking about some Phish reunion tour that was just so awesome. Cameron pretended to be interested, all the while focused, peripherally, on the La Jolla girls’ moves. She didn’t trust them, and she didn’t trust herself around them.

  After a while, Nikki said to Cameron, “You look so familiar.”

  Lucy overheard this and said, “Cameron is from La Jolla. Where did you go to school before you transferred to Bel Air?”

  Cameron had no choice but to admit the truth. “I went to Country Day.”

  “That’s where we went,” said Keisha.

  “Wait,” said Max. “I thought you said you just graduated high school.”

  “I did.”

  “So you were in our grade?” asked Braden.

  Cameron nodded, happy that none of the kids recognized her.

  “But our school isn’t even that big. What’s your last name?” asked Keisha.

  It was ironic that Keisha was the one to blow her cover. Of all the La Jolla girls, Keisha had been the least cruel back then. Sometimes she was even nice (although at the time Cameron had figured this was out of pity).

  Reluctantly, Cameron admitted, “Beekman.”

  All conversation ceased. It was so quiet that Cameron heard a seal calling in the distance, as if even the animals in the ocean were stunned by the revelation.

  The La Jolla crowd looked uniformly shocked, while Cameron’s Bel Air friends were just confused.

  “Oh my gosh,” said Alexis. “You’re Beakface!” She couldn’t have been drunk already, but she sure was acting that way.

  “Cammi. Wait, you’re Cameron Beekman?” asked Braden, inching away as if she were diseased.

  “There’s no way.” Devon gasped.

  Hunter and Max stared at her. They all did.

  “Yes, she’s Cameron Beekman,” said Nikki, setting down her margarita as if it were poisoned. “I knew it!”

  “Weren’t you a brunette?” asked Alexis.

  Cameron shrugged, not denying it.

  As Taylor looked back and forth between the La Jolla crowd and Cameron, her blond pigtails swung. “You know one another?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” said Cameron.

  “I mean, I never would have recognized you. Not in a million. Not in a gazillion trillion years,” said Nikki.

  Cameron was glad she was unrecognizable, but at the same time she felt insulted. So she’d had a big nose and braces … Nikki was treating her like she’d been the Bride of Frankenstein.

  Yet why did she even care what these people thought of her? She despised them.

  Still, she’d enjoyed flirting with Hunter. Knowing she could flirt with Hunter. What was wrong with her?

  Alexis turned to Cameron and said, “What, did you get a nose job or something?”

  Way to thrust the knife in even deeper, thought Cameron, now too mortified to speak.

  She couldn’t lie. She could try, but no way would they believe her.

  She shrugged, again. They’d reduced her to practically a mute in just a few minutes. It was like seventh grade all over again. “Um, I guess,” she said.

  “You guess?” Alexis laughed, cruelly. “I didn’t know there was any guessing involved. Either you had one or you didn’t.”

  “I—,” Cameron began.

  “It’s okay. You look great. I never would have recognized you,” said Braden.

  “I know. Huge improvement,” Keisha added.

  It felt like charity, and charity was the last thing Cameron wanted.

  “We have stuff to do,” said Lucy, interrupting, sitting down next to Cameron. “So if no one wants anything else …”

  Everyone wanted something else, but Lucy wasn’t really offering. The guys and girls from La Jolla ripped their scrutinizing gazes from Cameron and set their drinks down. Everyone who was in the hot tub got out. No one even asked for towels.

  “Um, thanks,” said Hunter, taking one last look behind him as they filed out.

  Cameron gulped down her third margarita, walked inside and collapsed on the living room couch. The room was spinning. Or maybe it was just her head.

  Sure, she’d had a nose job, but that was only a small part of her transformation. Cameron was a whole different person. She’d just proved it.

  Braden had jumped at her simple request for new music. Hunter, apparently Alexis’s boyfriend, had had his arm around her. Their knees had rested casually against each other …

  So why had she allowed these girls to get to her? Why did her confidence drain at lightning speed?

  Cameron could answer her own questions. It wasn’t just that the pain was so raw. In the back of her mind, she’d always wondered how much her nose had to do with her success at Bel Air Prep. She’d often played a game with herself, trying to imagine what her life would have been like under different circumstances: If she’d gotten the nose job but hadn’t transferred schools, if she hadn’t gotten the nose job and had transferred …

  Was her current social status based on a lie? Would she even have her current friends if it weren’t for her new nose? Or was it all about the plastic surgery, the eight-thousand-dollar investment her parents had made to fix her face? The problem was, this made her feel like a fraud. It was like cheating on a big exam and getting an A. Sure, the result is great, but you can never truly be happy with yourself, knowing how you got it.

  “They’re horrible,” said Hadley.

  “I know,” Taylor agreed. “What bitches.”

  “And that guy Emmett?” said Ashlin. “He’s only going to junior college.”

  Lucy, who had remained silent until now, looked out toward the beach and then back at Cameron. “So, Cammi,” she said. “Tell us about Beakface.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When it became clear that Allie was not going to calm down anytime soon, Julie got out of the car and walked around to the driver’s side. Opening the door, she reached down and put her arms around her daughter’s small, trembling body. “Don’t worry, sweetie. No one was hurt, and it’s just a car. We’ll get it fixed.”

  Allie opened her mouth in a struggle to say something, anything, but she was too upset. Her throat had constricted to the point where speaking had become physically impossible. Even her breathing seemed labored.

  “It was my fault,” said Julie. “I never should have taken that call. I should have been paying closer attention, but you were doing so well. If that squirrel hadn’t darted out into the road …”

  So it was a squirrel she’d avoided and not a dog. This someh
ow made it worse. Not that Allie’s thunderstorm of tears was really about animals or wrecked cars.

  “Learning to drive takes time,” Julie continued.

  Allie pressed her fingertips to her closed eyes but was unable to block out the too smooth and smiling Dr. Glass.

  The whole morning had been nightmarish. This accident should have been the climax—the final jolt to wake her up and make her realize she was safe in her bed at home, that none of this was real. But it wasn’t happening.

  No one had even asked her if she wanted a nose job. They’d just made all these plans around her, like she didn’t even have a say in the matter. It was like when she was six and her mom signed her up for ballet class because Cameron had loved to dance.

  Allie hated pink leotards.

  And she’d just wrecked her mom’s car.

  Some stranger’s car too.

  When she hadn’t even wanted to drive her mother’s stupid boat of a car in the first place.

  Everyone told Allie that she’d love to drive, but she wasn’t convinced.

  Here is what Allie loved: the smell of fresh, dewy grass early in the morning and the bold yellow and blue stripes on her soccer uniform. Also, the way her legs looked after practice—the red indentations on her skin from the straps of her shin guards and her tight socks, the flecks of dried mud that stuck to her knees.

  Her team went to Colorado every summer because training in the high altitude made them stronger. Allie had been longing for the cool mountain air ever since she’d had to leave it last summer. At soccer camp, all anyone talked about was the game for three weeks straight.

  Allie didn’t want to miss a minute of it. Not even for a better nose.

  And that wasn’t all. It was mortifying to sit there while her mother showed the surgeon pictures of her sister. To Allie, Julie’s message was clear: “Cameron is our perfect, beautiful daughter. We would like for Allie to be just like her.”

  Allie wasn’t like Cameron and she never would be. In all honesty, she didn’t even strive to be. Between blowing out her hair, applying makeup, and getting dressed, it took Cameron ninety minutes to get ready for school every morning. Ninety minutes when they had to wear a uniform. Cameron agonized over her shoes and accessories, and it was all so much work. Allie didn’t see the point.

  Of course, explaining this to her mother was too complicated. Plus, her mom worried about stuff like that too, and Allie didn’t want to insult her.

  “Come look,” said Julie, walking over to the wrecked car, a bright yellow Hummer, which was parked a few feet behind them. “It’s not so bad, Allie. Really, it’s not. This is why we have insurance.”

  Allie got out of the car and walked around to the other side. Her mom’s car had a thick yellow scrape on the front bumper. The mirror on the passenger side had shattered, and the cracked chunk of plastic was dangling from the car by two measly wires. The Hummer was bashed in on one side, with the backseat door completely caved in.

  The sight of it caused Allie’s chest to tighten. The Hummer was designed for military purposes, to weather bullets and bombs and to be virtually indestructible. It was just like Allie to have found a way to destroy one with her mother’s sedan. On a suburban street. In broad daylight.

  “You’ll feel better once you’re home,” said Julie. She pulled a scrap of paper and a pen from her purse and leaned against the Hummer’s windshield to write. “I’ll just leave a note for the owner of this car and we’ll be off.”

  Allie sniffed and wiped her tears from her face with the back of her hand.

  It was that simple. Her mom took care of everything, as usual.

  “Thank God your face is okay,” said Julie, once she was behind the wheel. “Did I ever tell you about my friend Mindy Davidson?”

  Allie nodded. Julie told this story often. Allie knew it well; she also knew that once her mother got started, there was no stopping her.

  “She was one of my first roommates in New York, back when I’d just been signed by the Ford Modeling Agency. We both moved to the city at around the same time, and we were both from small towns in Wisconsin. Eighteen years old, our first time living away from home—we had so much in common,” Julie went on. “But she always did so much better than me—not that I minded. I was just happy to be away from home. Anyway, Mindy was spectacular. If it wasn’t for the accident, I know she’d have been a huge success. She’d recently landed the cover of Marie Claire, and she was coming home late one night from a bar, in the rain, when her cab smashed into a brick wall. It was horrible. She broke every bone in her face, had to get emergency surgery. A top plastic surgeon saw her soon after, but it was too late. Even though he put her face back together again, something was lost.”

  Her mom always ended the story there, but to Allie it seemed incomplete. “What happened to her?” she asked.

  “I told you. She never looked the same so she never worked again.” Julie clucked her tongue and shook her head.

  “At all?”

  “In the industry.” Her mom replied as if it were obvious, as if this were just one more dumb question that Allie shouldn’t have had to ask. She opened the garage door. “You must still be upset. Please don’t worry so much, Allie. Accidents happen.”

  Allie was glad that Cameron was still in Cabo. Getting into a car accident before she even had her license seemed too dorky, even for her. Allie couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on her sister’s face, the silent acknowledgment that there was something wrong with her. She’d read that look in her big sister’s eyes when the homecoming court nominations came out last fall. Cameron had been nominated for the third year in a row, and Allie had not. Her big sister told her she’d been robbed, and Allie laughed. Not only had she not been expecting to be nominated, she hadn’t even realized it was something she was supposed to want. The homecoming court didn’t do anything. They just stood there on stage, smiling vacantly and wearing stupid plastic tiaras.

  “Can we not tell Cameron about this?” Allie asked. “Please?”

  “This isn’t a big deal, Allie. Really, but if it’s important to you, then don’t worry. We’ll just say the car needed to be serviced.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Please don’t be so hard on yourself. This could have happened to anyone.”

  Maybe this was true, but the fact remained: It had happened to Allie. Things always happened to Allie.

  On their first day of Bel Air Prep, Cameron had come home with a new best friend, while Allie had come home with a bee sting on her ear. Cameron got almost all As and Allie had to see a math tutor twice a week to maintain her B-minus. Cameron went out with Blake, who everyone loved, and Allie had never even kissed a guy.

  As she headed for the stairs, her mom said, “Don’t forget to call Coach McAdams.”

  “I won’t,” called Allie, as she headed for Cameron’s room because that’s where she could find the biggest mirror.

  Once there she stared at herself. Allie had a good body from playing sports. Or at least, that’s what everyone said, so she guessed it was true. Her smile was pretty as well. Her teeth were straight, and she’d never even needed braces. From the front her nose looked okay, but in profile it was on the large side. Still, it wasn’t like it dominated her face. She had nice blue eyes and shiny, shoulder-length dark hair. It was all one length because Cameron had told her it looked better that way. She had a cute sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and she wondered what would happen to them after the surgery. Would her freckles be in a different place? She wanted to ask but knew she couldn’t without sounding dumb.

  Allie headed back to her room, dreading the phone call she had to make. Sitting down cross-legged on her bed, she dialed her coach’s number.

  “Hello, Coach McAdams? This is Allie Beekman. I have to come to camp late this year, I think.”

  “Oh, hi, Allie. What do you mean, late?”

  “Well, I can’t come until August sixth,” Allie admitted, as she pulled a loose
thread from her sock.

  “You’ll be missing an entire week.”

  “I know.”

  “How is our team supposed to be prepared for the season if I have players skipping half the camp?” asked Coach McAdams.

  It’s not really “players,” thought Allie. It’s just me. And it’s not half, only a third. “I’m sorry. I really wish I could be there.”

  The coach sighed. Allie sensed that she was growing impatient. Coach McAdams lived and breathed soccer. She’d played in college and had almost made the US women’s team in the 2004 Olympics. She’d even founded a soccer clinic for underprivileged kids. Allie’s best friend, Quincy, was working there for the summer. Allie had wanted to as well, but she couldn’t commit the time because of her surgery. Not that she’d used this excuse when she’d had to say no. Of course, now there was no avoiding it.

  “You’ll need to give me a reason, Allie.”

  She had to come clean, but it was so embarrassing. She took a deep breath and blurted out the news. “I’m getting a nose job in a few weeks, and the doctor says I can’t play sports for three weeks after.”

  The coach was silent for a few moments. Allie felt her face burn red.

  “Next year is going to be tough, Allie. I was really counting on you.”

  Allie cringed at her coach’s use of the past tense. “I’ll train extra hard once I recover.”

  “And I was going to wait until we were in Colorado to tell you this, but I have one spot left on the varsity team.”

  “Really?” asked Allie.

  “Yes, Rachel Meyers is moving to Washington. That means I’ll be pulling someone up from JV. Tryouts will be held on the last day of camp, and I could really use a left-footed forward on the team.”

  “Well, I’ll be there in time,” said Allie. “I’d love to play varsity next year.”

  “Sorry,” said Coach McAdams. “If you’re not going to camp for the entire three weeks, I can’t give you a shot. It wouldn’t be fair to everyone else.”

  Coach McAdams didn’t need to voice the real issue. Allie knew what was at stake. She and Quincy were the stars of the JV team. Allie was left-footed, which gave her a slight advantage over Quincy, who was a more aggressive scorer. It would still be a lot of work to beat her, but if Allie didn’t try out, then Quincy would be a shoo-in for the varsity team.