Lindsay's Joyride

by Molly Hurford

  From my backpack, I pull out my notebook and look down at the sketches Phoebe helped me draw last night of my costume. And then I look over at my reflection in the window—jeans, baggy T-shirt—and back down to the sketch. I think about how cool Jen looked with purple streaks in her hair and how comfortable Ali seemed in her shorts. I don’t want to look like either of them, but they both seem so much older than me, so much…more than me. I want to feel like I did the night Phoebe let me borrow her clothes, but I don’t want to be borrowing someone else’s style and life. I want to be my own kind of super.

  I’ve seen enough movies and TV shows to know that there’s only one way to solve this: a makeover montage. I wonder if Phoebe can take me to the mall.

  Lindsay’s Makeover List:

  New glasses

  Skinny jeans and/or leggings

  Cool shirts: Maybe it’s time to ditch the cartoons and get some more grown-up tops? I mean, Batgirl doesn’t wear a shirt with Supergirl’s face on it. That would be weird.

  Canvas backpack

  Better hair (?)

  Ever evolving,

  Lindsay

  (I kinda like this one!)

  CHAPTER 15

  “You know a makeover montage doesn’t just happen, right? Music isn’t going to start playing at the store, and we might not even find an outfit,” Phoebe says as she pours her coffee while I sit at the counter the next morning. I was up late last night listing what I needed in my makeover shopping list. Now that I’m listing it out to Phoebe at the breakfast bar, it does seem a little extreme. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

  “I know, I know,” I say impatiently. “But can we go to the mall anyway?”

  “Of course,” she says. “After we practice your front and rear wheel lifts. And we will find the perfect outfit, I promise. We’ll even blast some music so it feels like a montage.”

  I roll my eyes, but just between us, I’m ridiculously excited to practice with my new bike, and I actually trust Phoebe when she says we’ll find the right outfit. Ten minutes later, the breakfast dishes are in the dishwasher and Phoebe and I are in the driveway. I’m riding directly at a curb, and every time I get within a few inches of it, I swerve out of the way. Phoebe, on the other hand, is riding next to me, and every time we get to the curb, she gently lifts her front wheel up by leaning her weight back; then once she’s up, she pushes her weight forward so the rear wheel gently follows. It’s like she’s not even pedaling over an obstacle at all, just hovering. Like she has secret jet packs in her bike, or helium in her tires. Hmmm…

  “I know it looks scary now,” she says sympathetically. I must look pretty pathetic. “It took me months to get over a curb the first time,” she says. That makes me feel a little better, and I attempt to bring my front wheel off the ground, yanking the bars up. I feel the slightest bit of lift and immediately slam back down, convinced I’ve come a heartbeat from toppling backward.

  Phoebe looks like she wants to giggle, but she doesn’t. Instead, she suggests we move to the grass for a little while. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m just that bad or because I’m so obviously terrified, but I’m grateful either way. She goes inside and comes out with a backpack that’s completely packed—it’s going to be way too heavy to wear while riding. But when she hands it over to me, it feels almost weightless. “I stuffed it with a pillow,” she explains. “Now you don’t have to worry about tipping over.”

  I don’t know exactly how that’s supposed to make it easier—I can’t help picturing myself landing and looking like a turtle. But she directs me to ride at a stick lying on the ground and try to lift my front wheel over it by shifting my hips and my weight back so I can let the front wheel “just come off the ground.”

  I feel a little more in control as I roll at it, and the stick is coming up as I pedal. “And…lift!” Phoebe shouts, and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m giving a little tug—not a yank—and shifting backward, and the wheel does lift, just a tiny bit, and comes down right on the other side of the stick.

  “I did it!” I shout. “And I didn’t fall over!”

  Phoebe high-fives me, and I’ve never felt so cool—and not just because I made contact on the high five. We do a few more repetitions of that, riding over the stick again and again. I haven’t quite gotten the rear wheel part of it, but by the end of the thirty minutes I promised Phoebe I’d work, I’ve gotten the front wheel up eight times in a row, which she says is good progress.

  “Before we head to the mall, I think there’s one more thing you should agree to if we’re doing this makeover,” she says as we pedal back toward the house. “I think you should think about entering that jump competition I know you stole the flyer for.”

  I almost fall over. “I can’t do a competition!” I say, maybe a little too loud. The old guy next door walking his dog gives me a dirty look. Definitely too loud.

  “Then why did you grab the flyer?” Phoebe asks. Darn her and her logic!

  “I…Well, I was maybe thinking about it, considering it, tossing the idea around, contemplating it,” I babble a little desperately.

  “There are beginner categories, so it won’t be like you’re racing against pros,” Phoebe says. “You don’t have to say yes right away. I just want you to think about it.”

  “I promise I’ll think about it,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back. Some things are just too scary.

  “All right, kid,” she says, pushing her bike into the house. “Let’s go shopping. You have your mom’s credit card, right?”

  “Do you think it’ll be okay if I use it?” I ask. “I have a hundred dollars that she gave me for spending money.”

  “I texted her this morning. She says it’s cool as long as we don’t pierce your nose.” She pauses, looking at me critically. “But you would look cute with a little stud.”

  I laugh nervously. “We’re not actually going to…”

  “Pierce your nose? Not a chance.”

  I take back what I said about getting over the stick in the grass being the coolest I’ve ever felt. The mall with Phoebe is way, way cooler. And at the same time, way, way scarier than any curb I need to ride over.

  Superhero Tip: Be careful what you wish for, because your cousin may end up taking you shopping.

  Again, I fear this might be my last journal entry.

  Written from the food court,

  Lindsay

  (That one stinks, but I am full of fries and don’t care.)

  CHAPTER 16

  We walk quickly past all the kids’ stores I usually shop at, and I’m starting to regret writing the list that I showed to Phoebe. It’s getting more and more nerve-racking as we pass cooler and cooler stores and people. “Maybe we should just go home,” I start to say, when she stops in front of a skate shop.

  She looks right at home, in jeans ripped at the knees and a black tank top that shows off the very top of her tattoo, plus a bulky silver watch on her right arm. A beat-up leather backpack is over her shoulder, and her hair is pulled back in a tiny bun that she tossed up in the car. She looks like a rock star. I’m wearing practically the same thing—minus the tattoo—but my baggy jeans and purple T-shirt make me look like I’m a little kid, not a rock star, even though we’re almost the same height.

  “This is our first spot,” she says. “You need new shoes if you’re going to ride.”

  “Good,” I say. I take a deep breath. Maybe she won’t notice that I’ve been holding it in. “I knew that.”

  We walk in, and I’m surrounded by shoes I’ve never seen before. Mom always buys mine from whatever department store she’s in when I outgrow my old ones. I’ve never had to pick them out myself.

  “Which ones should I get?” I ask Phoebe, who’s already st
anding over a pair of slip-on sneakers. They’re made from a shiny black snakeskin material and have dark gray soles. They look like a cross between old and new Phoebe—tough and kind of scary, but still really athletic.

  “I love these,” she mumbles, like she didn’t even hear me. She looks up. “Sorry, did you say something?” She grins. “Shoe shopping. It gets me every time. But what about these for you? You need a shoe with a firm enough sole that it won’t be bending over your pedals when you ride.” She picks up a pair of plain black canvas shoes with the same dark gray sole. They’re not as outrageous as the ones she’s hugging under one arm for herself, and they seem just right for me. Not too loud, but not exactly quiet either.

  A sales assistant helps me find the right size, and they’re comfortable enough that I want to get out and walk around the mall in them. “Done,” I say, grabbing them.

  “We haven’t even started,” Phoebe says, glancing over her shoulder as she marches down the aisle toward the register. “Don’t you know how to shop? It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she warns me as I run to catch up. These shoes don’t seem to really go with what I’m wearing, but if I were to make a guess, I think Phoebe is dead set on changing that in the immediate future. Suddenly, my long list of things I need is starting to seem a little more intimidating than fun. (This might be one of those “be careful what you wish for” moments that my mom warned me about.)

  We walk out of that store and directly into the one next to it, where the walls are decorated with skateboards. “I thought I was getting stuff for bike riding,” I whisper, trying to stay cool.

  “BMX and skateboarding are really similar in style,” Phoebe explains. “And a lot of kids do both. But cycling is better,” she says in a low voice, glancing around to make sure no one heard her. She goes over to a shelf of jeans. “Jeans are on your list, right?” I nod. “You’ll want a couple of pairs that fit a little bit better than what you have. I’m not just saying that for fashion reasons, though there’s that too. But if they’re tighter in the legs, you won’t catch them in the chain of your bike.” She grabs a couple of dark blue and black pairs. “I don’t know about black jeans for you, but you can try them on,” she says.

  “Why not?” I ask. “Am I not cool enough?”

  She gets a funny look on her face. “No, kiddo,” she says. “I just mean…Look. At your age, girls aren’t always nice to you, right?” I nod again. “Sometimes, it’s hard to really stand out and do your own thing. I just don’t want you to end up with clothes that will make you feel uncomfortable. I got picked on a lot when I was your age for wearing lots of black and super-punk stuff.”

  “Do you wish you’d been different?” I ask, not really sure if I want to know the answer. “I mean, more normal,” I clarify, but somehow that seems even worse.

  Instead of getting grumpy, her face lights up. “Not in a million years…Even if it drove my mom crazy.” She grabs a few thin, dark gray sweaters off a nearby rack, and a black tank top to go with them. She hands them over and marches me to the dressing room.

  I swap my loose jeans for the skinny black pair, shove on my new shoes, and drag on the tank top and the sweater, which hangs slightly off my shoulder and shows off the straps of the tank top. A hat comes sailing over the door—a black flat-brimmed baseball cap that says “Joyride” in big white cursive letters.

  “Put that on!” she shouts. I do, and I stare in the mirror. I look pretty cool, to be honest. The black and gray doesn’t look like how any of the other girls at school dress, but it feels pretty punk rock—in a way that I can totally handle. And the hat makes me feel like I actually belong on the tracks at Joyride, not just on the sidelines.

  “I love it,” I whisper, doing a twirl. I’ve never wanted to twirl in a new outfit before. “It’s definitely not pink.”

  “Let me see!” Phoebe says, banging on the door. I open it and grin, and her face widens into a smile as she snaps a picture and texts someone.

  “You look amazing!” she says, high-fiving me. “Maybe you can pull off black pants.”

  “And if I can’t, who cares?” I say boldly.

  Her phone pings. Whoever she texted must have been waiting for her message. “Your mom says you look fabulous, and she’s so excited that her baby is growing up,” Phoebe says, reading off her phone.

  “You sent her a picture?” I ask, slightly horrified.

  “She is paying for it,” Phoebe responds.

  “Tell her…thanks, I guess,” I say. And it is pretty cool that my mom’s on board with this makeover, even though it’s to kind of undo the style she’s forced on me for years. Why is black and gray okay now? If I’d known I just needed to be nicer to Phoebe to dress cooler, I would have talked to her a long time ago and gotten this shopping trip on the road.

  “How did you get my mom to agree to this?” I ask.

  “Honestly? Your mom thought she was putting you in stylish clothes and that you’d be wearing what the other kids in school were wearing,” Phoebe says. “She was trying—but you’ve seen pictures of her and my mom as teenagers. They’re not the most fashion-forward.”

  She’s got that right.

  But we’re not here to complain about my mom’s terrible acid-wash jeans. (Not right now anyway.)

  “Find me another outfit!” I say, running back to the dressing room. Black leggings come flying in, along with a sporty, dark purple dress. They’re followed by dark blue jeans and a purple T-shirt with a small white pocket, and a dark gray vest with lime-green piping that looks like something Mom would have worn in the nineties.

  “Seriously?” I say.

  “You wanted a makeover, didn’t you?” Phoebe asks innocently. “And this does match your bike pretty perfectly. We’re going for a theme here, you know.”

  Weirdly enough, the vest looks cool with the T-shirt under it. And it really will match with my bike!

  With a huge pile of clothes (and the Joyride hat—how cool is it that the shop stocks Joyride merchandise?), we head to the cash register and Phoebe hands over the credit card again.

  “Time to go home?” I ask.

  “Kid, you’re really new to the makeover thing, aren’t you?” Phoebe replies. “We still haven’t hit the big stuff.”

  Five minutes later, we’re standing outside an eyeglass store. “No, no, no, no!” I say. “No contacts, I don’t care how many makeovers require them.”

  “No one thinks you should get contacts,” Phoebe says, rolling her eyes. “We’re here for glasses.” We walk in, and she goes straight to a pair of glasses in the back. Rectangular and with thick black frames, but they seem small enough that they won’t look goofy and oversized on me. “Try these on.” She shoves them into my hands and plucks my current wire-rims off my nose.

  I always wanted thick black frames, but Mom said they were too much like the ones she hated when she was a kid, so she wanted me to get invisible rims instead. The compromise was getting the wire-rimmed glasses—more nerdy than cool librarian, and I’ve been stuck with them for years.

  When I tried on the black frames during our last shopping trip, though, I actually felt super—like I could rip them off and suddenly fly, Superman-style, if I had to. They made me look intellectual, but also like I maybe played in a rock band on the weekends (which is the look I’d be going for if I had a choice).

  I slide on the frames and glance in the mirror. I was afraid I’d look nerdy, but instead, I look like Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter. I look…kind of cool.

  “I love them!” I exclaim. It’s almost too easy. These are the glasses I’ve wanted for so long. I know that comic book characters totally change their appearance with glasses, but who knew it would work on me, in real life?

  Phoebe puts in the order for them with my prescription.

  “Last stop,” Phoebe says, and pulls me into another store. I don’t think I�
��ve ever shopped this much in my life.

  We emerge a few minutes later with a purple canvas backpack, which Phoebe says will break up all the black and keep me from looking like a cat burglar. I tried arguing for all black, like Catwoman, but she just laughed and said my mom might not appreciate that.

  “What about jewelry?” I ask, suddenly panicked.

  “You can borrow a few things from me and see what you like,” Phoebe says. “Geez, I’ve created a monster.”

  I shoot her a look. “Not literally!” she laughs. No potions or secret magic spells, just the power of a good shopping trip.

  “And, Linds,” she says, pausing midwalk. “I am cutting your hair when we get home….After we go meet Ali at Joyride.”

  Eep.

  Sitting in the car and glancing in the mirror, I already feel different, just from the new outfit and the subtle changes that Phoebe has made to my hair. It’s in a side braid, since it got a little frizzy from all the on-and-off when trying on clothes. I like it, and I’m almost feeling excited to see the girls at Joyride again. But not quite yet. I do kind of want that haircut, now that Phoebe explained what she wants to do, and I’m still a little nervous. It feels a little like I’m playing dress-up as a cool skater girl, not actually someone who’s good at tricks and being…cool.

  Superhero Tip: I think—and I need to investigate this further—that maybe the trick to looking cool is confidence. Wearing almost the same thing as Phoebe, I still don’t feel as cool as her, but I worry that might be because I’m not owning it. And I’m not totally sure how.