The Humiliations of Pipi McGee

by Beth Vrabel

  “Oooh.” Jackson laughed. “I remember that! You only had one for about a year, right?” He laughed again.

  Sarah rolled her eyes at them. “Well, they look really awesome now.”

  “Yeah, they grew back.” I shrugged. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Kara’s just upset because hers are so thin no one sees them,” Sarah said.

  “Sarah!” Two bright red circles bloomed on Kara’s cheeks.

  “I could talk to Eliza,” I said super casually, wiping the corners of my mouth with a paper napkin. “Maybe she has one of the special blends, something that could work for your…” I motioned to her eyebrows.

  The red spots on Kara’s cheeks spread to cover her whole face. Looking down at her empty sundae bowl, she muttered, “Fine.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Sarah nudged Kara, who rolled her eyes. “Thanks,” she spit out like the word was rotten in her mouth.

  Sarah got up to use the bathroom and Jackson went to talk with his dads a few minutes later.

  Kara stared at me. I raised an eyebrow and smiled. Slowly, a smile spread across Kara’s face, too. She leaned toward me across the tabletop. “You know this isn’t real, right?” Kara said. “I mean, you sitting here acting like you’re part of our group. But you’re not. You are and always will be just a joke, Peepee McGee.”

  My mouth flopped open. My eyes filled, but I couldn’t move.

  “What’s up?” Sarah asked as she got back to the booth. She glanced from me to Kara and back.

  “I was just telling Pipi a joke,” Kara said. She smiled sweetly at me.

  Sarah’s face darkened. “Not everyone gets your sense of humor, Kara,” she said. Her eyes were wide as she turned to me. “But, Penelope, you know she’s just joking, right?”

  “Of course.” I forced a smile.

  Oh, Vile Kara Samson. You’re going down.

  After Mom brought me home, I could tell she wanted to hang out. Half the pizza was missing and there was a spoon in an empty pint of vanilla bean ice cream. Alec was asleep on the couch, curled up with his head on the armrest. “He fell asleep before she even remade the prom gown,” Mom whined.

  “It was a super long, super awesome day,” I said. “I’m off to bed.”

  “Okay,” she sighed and picked up another slice.

  But when I got up to my room, I couldn’t turn off my mind.

  I went to my pile of paper scraps and started crafting, but I didn’t have enough supplies to really make anything. Besides, I had started something in the art room and that was really the only thing I wanted to work on.

  I lay back on my bed, thinking. Mean moments with Kara aside, the day was amazing. Amazing. Everyone wanted to be near me—even to touch me. I spent the whole evening with the three coolest people in the class. Everyone now thought of me as being good luck instead of a total virus. It was so much fun! Was it, though? I told my brain to knock off its questioning. Of course, it was fun. So. Much. Fun.

  Which sort of made me think of P. Art Tee’s and all the parents who kept saying, “Aren’t you having so much fun?” to their kids over and over again. “Isn’t this so much fun?”

  And that, of course, made me think of Ricky and how we really did have so much fun playing Skee-Ball and dancing with Piper and being totally silly and not even caring one bit.

  And thinking of Ricky made me think, of course, of Tasha.

  Tasha.

  Tasha, who had texted me twice.

  Tasha, who was my best friend.

  Tasha, who had invited me over to her house at seven o’clock for a sleepover and Supernatural and egg salad and potato chips.

  I sucked in my breath, heart hammering, and checked my phone. It was after ten.

  I called her with shaking fingers, my heart thudding that I was such a jerk, such a jerk, such a jerk. How could I forget our sleepover?

  I was such a terrible friend!

  The phone rang and rang. Finally, a super drowsy Tasha picked up, but she didn’t say anything at all after “hello.”

  “I’m so sorry!” I blurted. “I’m so sorry! The basketball game went really awesome, and I somehow made The Touch good luck and then everyone wanted to be around me and they invited me to the diner for ice cream and then I told Kara I’d do her a favor and Jackson gave me fist bumps all night and then…”

  “Then what, Penelope?” Tasha asked, her voice quiet over the phone.

  “Then I…”

  “You what?”

  “I forgot—”

  Click.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tasha ignored every one of my five thousand texts and calls on Sunday.

  But I knew once I talked with her on Monday, she’d forgive me. I’d tell her how things just sort of exploded at the basketball game—with the Pipi Touch being a good thing now and another item off The List—and she’d understand.

  Maybe I’d even tell her my plans for Kara.

  But first, I had to make those plans a reality.

  Sunday afternoon, I was helping out at Mom’s gym. When things slowed down about three o’clock, I told Mom I was going to see Eliza, who was working next door. (Annie was spending the day mini-golfing with Dad.) Mom paused in the middle of entering new client profiles into the computer. “Eliza? Your sister, Eliza?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. You’ve met her. Tall, pretty, a little bit angry.”

  Mom rolled her eyes but waved me toward the door. “Just… be nice. Eliza’s been going through some stuff lately.”

  “What kind of stuff?” I asked.

  “Things with Annie. She’s getting to the age where she’s asking a lot of questions.” Mom stood and stretched. Her belly was just a smidgen rounder than it used to be, something I never would’ve noticed if I didn’t know there was a baby bean growing in there.

  The sky was a bright blue, with no clouds to temper the glare. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the makeup shop interior. This one wasn’t like the mall shop—it was bright and homey. The walls were painted white and twinkle lights shimmered around the ceiling. Instead of cold, dark countertops, antique-looking tables painted turquoise or purple displayed the cosmetics. The walls were covered in mirrors with different frames. The ceiling, I noticed, was the same bright blue as the sky outside.

  Something twitched inside me as I looked around. The store had an appearance of Eliza’s old bedroom. She had never gotten around to decorating my old room when she moved in just before Annie was born; it still was just brown walls, beige carpet. Annie’s room, of course, was beautiful, with purple walls and paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

  I hadn’t been into Glitter since Eliza first started working there, when Annie was still in diapers. Then it had been a lot like the mall makeup shop, all smooth and cold. Eliza made this shop look like home. No wonder everyone called it her shop.

  I heard laughter and spotted my sister in the back. She was wearing an apron, her bright blond hair catching the light, as she helped a customer pick out lipstick. The woman was old, maybe eighty or even ninety, with dark brown skin but hardly a wrinkle at all. She was wearing a soft purple pantsuit and was talking about getting ready for a dance she was going to that weekend.

  Eliza caught my reflection in one of the mirrors and waved at me. I nodded back, then just browsed. The shop had a customization section with tiny blue glass bottles where people could blend their own moisturizers, cleansers, or foundation.

  Eventually, the lady chose a mauve lipstick. Eliza wrapped up the cosmetic tube and walked the woman outside to the nursing home van waiting for her. As Eliza reentered the shop, I pocketed one of the bottles. It wasn’t stealing, not really. The bottles were free—customers were just supposed to pay for the stuff in them. That’s what I told myself, anyway. My heart freaked out, insisting that it was wrong.

  “Pipi?” Eliza asked. “What are you doing here?”

  I shrugged. “The other day, you said something about a makeover?”

/>   “Really?” Eliza almost squealed. She grabbed my wrist and led me to one of the tables in the back of the shop. “Your timing is perfect; it’s super slow in here today.”

  A half hour later, I had a bag full of samples of different products. I honestly wasn’t sure I’d be able to figure out how to use any of them, but the me in the mirror looked a whole lot more like Eliza in all the best possible ways.

  “How did you figure out how to do all of this?” I asked her.

  “I’ve always loved makeup,” Eliza said. “Don’t you remember all the makeovers I used to give you?”

  I glared at her. One of Eliza’s “makeovers” ended with me having red lipstick that stretched out to my ears like a clown’s mouth. She winked at me. “I’ve gotten a little better since then.”

  “I miss you,” I blurted. It didn’t make any sense; we lived in the same house. I saw her every day. But it had been so long since I had seen her like this—confident, easy, happy. I mean, obviously Annie made her happy. She was super in love with her. But in this shop, Eliza was herself.

  Eliza’s face stilled, like my words were settling across her. Her smile drifted away. “I do, too,” she said, and I’m not sure if she meant that she missed me or if she also missed herself. She turned and cleaned up the makeup station, rubbing antiseptic wipes across the brushes she had been using. When she spoke, her voice was so low I could barely hear it. “I’ve been sort of, I don’t know, invisible for the past few years. Everyone thinks they know me—teen mom, mess up, high school dropout.”

  “You didn’t drop out!” I interrupted. Eliza had gotten her GED almost immediately after Annie was born; she started taking college classes before she would’ve graduated with her high school class.

  “Yeah, I know that. You know that. But everyone else just assumes, you know?” She wiped at a smear on the mirror. “Poor Eliza, so smart, so much potential, now just works at Glitter.” I saw her reflection in the mirror as she cleaned it. Her mouth was set in familiar straight lines again. “Her own daughter doesn’t even call her ‘mom.’”

  “No one says that,” I whispered, even though it was a lie. Didn’t I just overhear Vile Kara Samson blabbing the same nonsense? The bottle in my pocket suddenly felt hot against my thigh.

  “It’s okay,” said Eliza, seeing right through me. “I know I’m smart.” Her chin lifted a little. “Did you know Annie’s preschool asked to have her tested for giftedness? She’s off-the-charts smart.”

  “Of course, she is,” I said.

  Eliza grinned. “Yeah, of course, she is.” Her eyes stayed locked with mine. “I haven’t always been the best mom. Or the best sister—”

  “Eliza—”

  She put up a hand, silencing me. “But, here? I’m really good at what I do. The classes I’m taking are a big help, too. I’m good at this job, at running this business.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “I’m going to ask for a promotion, once my graduation is official at the end of this semester. The manager is rarely here, and the owners don’t seem to care all that much. I think I could do it. I know I can do it.”

  “You’re graduating this semester? Mom never told me,” I said.

  Eliza shrugged. “I didn’t tell her. I doubled up classes this past year. I don’t need a big party or anything like she’d plan. I just want to… want to kind of get me and Annie established, you know?”

  I squinted at her. “What do you mean, established?”

  Eliza threw away the paper towel she had been using to clean the mirror. “Never mind.” The bell on the shop door rang and Eliza turned toward it. “I’ll be right with you!” she called out.

  “Thanks again,” I said. “I’m just going to look around a little, okay?”

  I stood in front of another section of the shop. Fingers darting out, I grabbed a tube of what I wanted, what would finally show Vile Kara what it was like to be me. Quickly, I went to the back of the shop, where a clerk smiled like we were old friends. “You’re Eliza’s sister, right?” she said. I just nodded. “I know she has some of this stuff at home, and just a smidgen goes a long, long way. Are you sure you don’t want to check with her—”

  I glanced behind me, where Eliza was now talking to the new customer. “No, I want this,” I snapped. The clerk’s forehead crinkled, but she stopped chitchatting and told me the total. “I don’t need a bag,” I said and shoved it in my pocket, where it fell with a subtle clink against the small blue bottle.

  Eliza called out a goodbye and the door slammed shut behind me.

  That night, instead of crafting a bird, I made a label. In small script, I wrote Eliza’s Eyebrow Serum and affixed it to the little blue bottle. Then I filled it with the contents of the tube I had purchased and the eyebrow gel from my sample bag. My bedroom door was open, and I heard Annie and Eliza playing.

  This was for them as much as it was for me, I told myself.

  Monday morning, I made sure I was walking by Kara’s locker. Word had continued to spread about the good-luck Pipi Touch, and dozens of people asked for fist bumps, saying things like, “Got a geo test this morning! Thanks, Pipi!”

  Kara sneered as she opened her locker. “Enjoying yourself?”

  I smiled at her. Really, though? The Touch thing was as annoying now as when people were actively trying not to touch me. Just then someone bopped me on the head. Annoying, yes, but also the opportunity I needed. I pretended it knocked me off balance and I fell forward, dumping my bag. As I reached for it, I sideswiped the little blue bottle, sending it scurrying toward Kara.

  “Oh, no!” I said and started to gather up all my pens, pencils, and other stuff I had “accidentally” dumped. “Do you see it? A little blue bottle?” I asked. “Eliza made a special blend for my eyebrows yesterday and I dropped it.”

  With my head bent, my hair covered my eyes, but I saw Kara sidestep so the bottle was behind her foot. “What kind of blend?” she asked.

  I pushed my hair back from my face and looked up at her. I had taken extra special care that morning, using all of the products Eliza had given me so that I looked polished. I even asked Eliza to help me with my eyebrows.

  “Oh, it’s just this eyebrow gel that she made especially for me.” I stood, sighing. “But I guess she’ll just have to make me more. Bummer.” I started to walk away but then got stabbed by a sudden worry. Over my shoulder, I said, “It was super important to only put it on my eyebrows. Just my eyebrows. She said if it got in my eyes, it’d be incredibly bad.”

  “Whatever,” Kara said. “Like I care.”

  I risked glancing back. Kara was bent over pushing something into her pocket.

  Even though I knew I’d be late for homeroom, I sprinted across the school to Tasha’s locker, hoping to clear this whole fight up. Her back was to me as I approached. Her head was thrown back in laughter at something one of her cross-country friends was saying.

  “Tasha?” I said.

  Her whole body stilled. She turned like she was made of glass. Her friends scurried away. I took a step back at the fury I saw in her eyes.

  Wade ran down the hall beside us while Tasha and I stayed frozen in place. He shot out his hand and swatted my arm. Well, he tried to get my arm but ended up knocking the side of my face. “Yes! I got The Touch!”

  Tasha’s eyes widened and her mouth popped open.

  “That’s what I’ve wanted to explain to you,” I said. “I’m so sorry about Friday night. I really am! But so much has happened. You wouldn’t believe it!” I smiled and threw out my arms. “I changed almost everything. I’m almost done!”

  Another kid—I think he was a sixth grader—jabbed me in the side. “Thanks, Peepee!”

  “It’s Pipi!” I snapped back, but he had already disappeared down the hall.

  “Oh, yeah?” Tasha crossed her arms. “I thought it was Penelope.” She turned her back to me and slammed shut her locker door. “I don’t even know who you are anymore. Even worse?” Tasha tugged her backpack up her arm. “I don’t think
you know.”

  “That’s not fair.” I stepped forward and pressed my back against the locker beside her so I could see Tasha’s face. “I told you from the beginning.” I lowered my voice. “The List—it’s working, Tasha. It’s really working. On Friday, after the game—”

  “You ditched me,” Tasha finished.

  “Look, I’m sorry about the egg salad and the TV show we’ve seen a million times, but something really big happened to me. Maybe you could be supportive? I mean, I’m finally doing everything you hounded me about for years.” I didn’t know where the words came from, but they tasted bitter. “What’s with you? Why can’t you be there for me? Be happy for me.”

  Tasha leaned closer to me. “I’m the only one who was there for you. Over and over and over again, I was the one who picked you up off the bathroom floor where you would’ve wallowed. Me.”

  “I know,” I snapped. “But if you could just see, I’m so close—”

  “If I could just see?” Tasha laughed, but it sounded like breaking glass. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

  “What are you talking about?” The look she was giving me, it was so cold. It was a face I had seen before, but always directed at someone else. Someone like Vile Kara Samson.

  I looked around. The halls were emptying, but more than a few kids were walking extra slowly down the hall, clearly listening to us. “Maybe we should talk later…”

  “Why? Worried someone will see us? Or, rather, see you? Everything is always about you, Pipi. Everything. You’re so worried all of the time about what other people think of you, yet you don’t see yourself at all.”

  “That’s totally not fair!” I yelled.

  “Friendships go both ways, Pipi!” Tasha’s hands curled into fists and she slammed them down on her thighs. “Both ways. That means I’m there for you, but once in a while? You. Have. To. Be. There. For me!”

  “I’m always there for you!” I bellowed back. How could she say this? How could she think this? “All I am is there for you. Waiting to cheer you on at your games. Waiting for when you can set aside time to sit with me. Waiting for you to grace me with your presence. Waiting for you to have time to answer my calls. I’m always waiting for you!”