The Girls

by Amy Goldman Koss

  I wiggled my finger into Darcy’s soft carpeting. It was deep, up to my second knuckle. I was going to have carpet like that one day. When I grew up, I was going to have lots of carpeting and maybe colorful rugs on top of the carpets. And no stiff furniture—I’d have all big stuffed, soft things, lots of cushions. My whole house was going to be like one giant pillow.

  The girls would come over to my pretty house and they’d look around and say, “Oh! So this is the real Renée!”

  But would Maya be there too? I decided that if I didn’t call or E-mail her tomorrow, I’d at least for sure act totally normal with her at school on Monday.

  But how would she act? I shuddered, imagining myself having to walk into school with everyone hating me. I wouldn’t be able to do it. If I were her, I’d run away.

  Darcy

  I WANTED CANDACE TO STAY after everyone else so we could talk about my party, but her mom came early to take her to Sunday school. Once Candace was gone, I wished everyone else would leave. I planned to get out my journal, write about my party, and maybe list all the names I could think of for our group, dropping Maya’s M. But Renée and Brianna and I went back up to my room.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked them.

  Brianna shrugged. “What do you want to do?”

  Renée picked up that same scraggly hag wig and petted it like it was a black cat. I knew she wanted to put it on again, but it wasn’t the same without Candace.

  “You could grow your hair out,” I said, “long like that. Dye it black.” Renée was so ghostly pale, with such wispy white feathers for hair, and she’d looked so lame in that black wig, that I was really only kidding. But Renée nodded as if she were seriously considering it.

  “Do you think you’ll um, dye your hair and stuff?” she asked me and Brianna.

  “Sure,” I said. “But my mom won’t even let me wear makeup till I’m sixteen. My sister didn’t mind, but I do.”

  “Keloryn didn’t want to wear makeup?” Renée asked.

  “Keloryn is weird,” I reminded her.

  Brianna said, “I got a rash from the makeup I had to wear in that play last year, remember? It itched something awful. I practically scratched my face off.”

  “All makeup isn’t like that,” I said. “That was probably cheap or something.” Then I turned to Renée and said, “I bet your mom would let you wear makeup right now if you asked her. She’d probably let you borrow hers.” I sighed.

  “My mom, um . . . she wants to um, get plastic surgery,” Renée said, frantically twirling the black hair around her finger and wrinkling her nose in disgust.

  “Plastic surgery—that’s like when you have your fat cut off and your boobs made bigger, right?”

  Renée nodded.

  “Is your mom going to get breast implants?” Brianna asked, her big brown eyes getting bigger and rounder.

  “No.” Renée shivered. “She has these, these folds over her eyelids that she hates.”

  “Eeeeeww!” I gasped. “She’d let them slice her EYEBALLS?”

  Renée nodded. “And she um, she wants a bigger chin.”

  I looked at Renée and we both burst out laughing. Brianna didn’t. She just sat there looking stiff as a plank.

  I said, “Well, I’d like a nose right smack in the middle of my forehead! And, Doctor, could you please make me a second mouth, here off to the side, so I could talk with my other mouth full?”

  Renée laughed. But Brianna sounded mad when she said, “Why should people have to keep something ugly on their faces just because they were born with it? That’s not fair.”

  “But there’s nothing so um, so ugly, really, about my mom’s chin,” Renée said.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Brianna said.

  “And to get CUT! Sewn!” I said. “Ish!” Then I told them about how my aunt, the ex-model, had her ears pinned back. Only one of them worked. So until she had it done over, she looked entirely lame, like a dog cocking one ear at a noise.

  Renée laughed, but Brianna just sat even stiffer. Then Keloryn called upstairs, “Brianna, your mom’s here!”

  We trooped downstairs and stood around the front hall while my sister talked Brianna’s mom’s ear off. Keloryn worshiped Brianna’s mom because she taught at the university and had a Ph.D. Maybe Keloryn thought Mrs. Cohen, or should I say Doctor Cohen, could get her a recommendation or something. My sister was very college-bound, good grades, honor society, that stuff.

  Eventually Keloryn let Brianna and her mom leave, and Renée and I went into the kitchen. “What was bugging Brianna?” I asked.

  “I think maybe, um. I’m not sure but I wonder if she um . . .”

  “Spit it out, Renée!” I said.

  “Well, we all know she um, you know. She doesn’t like her nose.”

  “You’re right!” I said. “Brianna’s probably dying for a nose job. Especially if she’s planning on being an actress.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she really, really um, wants to be an actress, do you? And anyway, actresses can have all kinds of noses.”

  “Well, actresses can,” I said, “but not stars. Movie stars have to have perfect little noses, like Candace’s.” We were quiet awhile, thinking about that. “It would be funny, you know,” I said, “if Brianna really did become a star, famous and stuff. It would make more sense if it were Candace.”

  Renée nodded, then said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure!” I said.

  Then out of the blue, Renée said, “What did Maya, um, what did she do exactly?”

  I took a gulp of air and felt myself get hot. I should have been ready for this, but I wasn’t and I felt entirely trapped. I had no idea why Candace had turned against Maya so suddenly. No idea at all. But I couldn’t admit that to Renée.

  She was waiting for my answer.

  I said, “You don’t know?” as if that were shocking. Then I added, “It’s really kind of personal, with Candace, and if she doesn’t want you to know, well . . . I’d like to tell you, really I would, Renée. But it’s just not my place to blab. Sorry.”

  Renée nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

  Brianna

  SHE’S A NICE KID, Darcy’s sister,” Mom said in the car.

  “Keloryn?” I said. “She’s okay. Kinda spooky though.”

  “Spooky?”

  “Well, she’s so good!”

  My mom laughed. Then she asked me how the party was, and how late we stayed up.

  “I dunno. Late,” I said.

  Mom sighed. “Does that mean you’re going to be out of sorts all day?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Remember, you promised to do your homework the second you got home,” she said.

  “I remember, I remember.” Then I said, “Mom? How do you feel about plastic surgery?”

  “Funny you should ask that. There was an article in the Times just this morning about the proliferation of clinics performing cosmetic surgery without adequate medical backup.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Storefront clinics, where surgeons are qualified but they’re not in or near hospitals. So if something goes wrong—if the patient starts hemorrhaging, that means bleeding uncontrollably, or goes into cardiac arrest, which means the heart stops functioning properly—they aren’t equipped to deal with it. The patient has to be transported to a proper medical facility, losing valuable time.”

  “Yuck!” I said.

  “Imagine dying for a face-lift!” Mom said. “That takes vanity to new heights!”

  I thought about that for a minute. If God created us to look the way He wanted us to look, then maybe He got mad when we messed with it. But if that were true, I thought, then why would He let people invent plastic surgery?

  “But what about in a hospital?” I asked my mom. “Where they have everything right there in case of an emergency?”

  “Any operation is dangerous. The anesthetic alone is always a risk.”

  “Renée’s mom wa
nts a bigger chin,” I said.

  Mom turned and looked at me, eyes wide. “A bigger chin?” I nodded and smiled a little. It did sound kind of funny.

  “To have surgery to save your life is one thing, but elective surgery . . . well, doesn’t that sound foolhardy to you?”

  I shrugged, wondering how old you have to be to get an operation without your parents’ consent. And I bet it cost a fortune.

  Darcy

  RENÉE’S DAD DIDN’T COME until around eleven. By then I was all talked out and tired. Renée’s dad was weird. He wiped his feet on the mat for about twenty minutes before stepping into our front hall. No wonder Renée’s mother was divorcing him. Renée’s mom wasn’t so bad. She was really young, and she had shelves and shelves of makeup and perfume and stuff in her bathroom. My mom’s cosmetics were a bottle of dandruff shampoo and a lipstick.

  And Renée’s mom dressed great. Not flashy like my aunt, the ex-model, who thought she was still a teenager. Renée’s mom didn’t wear short skirts or tight, low-cut tops. She just always looked nice. I bet she’d get a new husband in no time.

  My mom’s closet held a dozen dark suits in a row, all almost exactly the same. Under that stood low-heeled, nearly identical pumps, black, mostly. Mom’s wackiest fashion statement was when she wore a pink blouse instead of a white one.

  After Renée left, my mom came into my room, dressed in her lawyer clothes. That meant she was going to the office, even though it was Sunday. She put her fists on her hips and said, “Keloryn told me something very disturbing last night. I didn’t want to confront you in front of your friends, but we need to talk about this right now.”

  I knew she meant the phone calls. “Keloryn’s a jerk,” I said, busily neatening my bookshelf.

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “The point is that I did not raise my daughter to be a bully. I need you to explain your actions toward Maya.”

  “We made a phone call, so what?” I told her. “It was just a joke.”

  “A joke?” Mom said. “I need to hear more than that.”

  My mother and her needs! She needs me to clean my room. She needs to know about that phone call. She needs to work on Sunday. I didn’t say anything.

  “Darcy,” she said in her stiff lawyer voice. “You and your pals did not invent cruelty and exclusion. It’s been going on since Eve. But it is the work of small minds. I need to know that you’re bigger than that. That you’re going to make amends to Maya. That you have a conscience, and regret victimizing that poor child.”

  “I don’t like Maya.”

  “That, Darcy, is irrelevant. The point is, you acted unkindly toward another human being, and you need to think long and hard about that.”

  I felt a guilty cramp in my gut, but I was absolutely NOT going to let my mother see that. And maybe the phone calls were a little mean, but at least now Maya knew she was history, and she wouldn’t have to find out in person. At least she’d know to stay away from us at school. So actually, I sort of did her a favor!

  I couldn’t tell my mother that it was Candace who’d brought Maya into our group, and Candace who decided to butt her out. That this was between them and had nothing to do with me. Did my mother actually expect me to be friends with someone Candace hated? Ish! That would be so complicated, sneaking around, trying to see both of them. Maya wasn’t worth it.

  I’d never thought Maya was anything special in the first place. In the beginning, Candace thought Maya was cool because she’d known girls who’d shot each other, and she’d lived where there were gangs and she couldn’t go outside after dark. Whatever.

  “Look at me when I’m speaking to you,” my mother said, her voice getting shrill.

  I turned and looked her right in the eye, using all my strength to keep my face completely blank. I knew she hated that. We stared at each other awhile and then she said, “You leave me no alternative but to ground you. You’re to come straight home from school, alone, until you apologize to both Maya and Mrs. Koptiev. Understood?”

  I said nothing. That was so unfair! Further proof that my mother had no clue about my life, zero sympathy and subzero understanding of what girls like me have to deal with. She’d never for a second been best friends with someone like Candace.

  My mother was always saying how pleased she was that I had a lot of friends and stuff, but she also said she didn’t think I was a good judge of character. Once she said she didn’t know what I saw in Candace!

  Didn’t she realize that the whole reason I was popular was because of Candace? How could she be proud of me for being Candace’s friend and at the same time hate Candace? She just didn’t want me to be happy. I bet she’s jealous that I was having fun and that I was more popular than she or her beloved Keloryn ever were or could ever hope to be! I knew they’d both be thrilled if I was just another lonely nerd like them. Well, tough.

  “IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?” my mother’s voice was louder, her face redder. “Answer me!”

  I didn’t.

  “And, as humiliated as I am by your conduct, I will swallow my shame and call Mrs. Koptiev myself to apologize. And, of course, I’ll make sure you’ve made your apologies. Needless to say, I do not appreciate being put in this position, Darcy.”

  My mother was looking right at me, but I knew she couldn’t see me. She’d never been able to see me for who I was. When my mother looked at me, I could tell she just saw a blur of disappointment, a blur of all the things she wanted me to be that I wasn’t.

  She left my room and I crumbled. Now I was grounded—all because of my creepy tattletale sister. I hated her. I reached for the phone to call Candace and tell her what had happened. I wanted to tell her what a witch my mom was. The witch and the snitch—that’s my family. But then I remembered that Candace was at Sunday school.

  I looked across my room at the box of wigs and remembered Candace clowning around, making everyone laugh. As mad as I was at my mom and my sister, I still felt lucky. The witch and the snitch and the whole rest of the world could try all they wanted to destroy me, but I’d always be fine—I had Candace!

  candace

  MY MOM PICKED ME UP alone! The twerps’ car seats were empty. Not even my bother was along for the ride.

  I tossed my stuff into the trunk and said, “My bag’s packed! This is our chance!”

  Mom smiled at me, puzzled.

  “Our chance to make a break for it!” I explained. “By the time Daddy figures out how to get the twins dressed, you and I could be halfway to Paris!”

  Mom laughed. “Well, maybe we have time to stop for a doughnut, at least.”

  “On our way to Paris?”

  “On our way to Sunday school.”

  “Come on, Mom, we could change our names, wear sunglasses. They’d never find us!”

  “What’s the matter, love?” Mom asked. “Did something bad happen at Darcy’s?”

  I sighed. “No. Nothing bad happened. Nothing good happened either. It was just . . .” I suddenly felt tired. “It was just plain ol’ plain.”

  How could I explain that sometimes Darcy, Brianna, and Renée felt like leeches? A swarm of parasites, living off my flesh. My mom would say that I should be flattered, she’d say I was lucky to be so important to my friends. My mom lived for other people; she liked being needed. At least that’s how she acted.

  “What did you do? Watch a movie?” Mom asked.

  I shrugged. I didn’t have to ask what she did while I was gone. That was no mystery—she ran after the twerps and folded laundry. I shuddered. What a life! I wondered if Mom ever secretly dreamed about escape. I bet at least once in a while, in her heart of hearts, she wished she could rewind her life, erase the tape, and do it all over differently.

  “Nick has a soccer game this afternoon,” she said. “Do you have any plans?”

  Oh no, not again. I braced myself and muttered, “No, I don’t have plans.” I knew what was coming.

  “Then would you mind watching Tess and Beth?”

  I
moaned.

  Mom pretended to ask, but she didn’t really ask. If I answered, Yes, I’d mind watching the twerps, she’d sigh that sigh of hers and make me feel like a selfish pig. I don’t know why her sigh made me feel so guilty. The twerps weren’t my responsibility. I certainly never asked her to have them.

  No fair! No fair! I chanted in my mind. If I’d said it out loud, my mom would have said what she always said: “Who said life was fair?”

  Mom couldn’t afford baby-sitters to watch the twerps because she didn’t have a job. And she didn’t have a job because she was home watching the twerps! Round and round it went. It was crazy, a craziness that left me baby-sitting for free all the time, like it or not.

  “Joanne has the flu, so I told her I’d pick up Jake and take him to the game for her.” Mom looked at me sheepishly. She knew I thought she did way too many favors for her friends. I didn’t see the other mothers offering to drive my bother to games when my mom was sick. And NO ONE offered to watch the twerps, EVER, except me—not that I actually offered either.

  Then Mom said, “I’d take the twins with me, but you know they’re all over the place. Last week I missed Nicky’s one and only goal because I was busy chasing Tess out from under the bleachers.”

  I looked over at her. She’d missed a spot brushing her hair. It was smooth all around except that one snaggly hank in back. And she was wearing a sweat suit again. It made her look like a cow.

  Oh no! Was she pregnant? I felt a hot panic burn through me. Not more babies! I whipped my head around and stared through the windshield, fighting tears.

  No! She wouldn’t do that to me—not again. It’s just those ghastly sweats, I told myself.

  “So, do you want to stop for doughnuts?” Mom asked.

  I found my voice and managed to say, “Doughnuts are fattening.”