Inside Out Girl

by Tish Cohen

  God, she was a bitch.

  She walked into the house and followed the sounds of footsteps to the guest room, Olivia’s room, where Len was trying to cram a Dora the Explorer pillow into the overstuffed suitcase. She reached out her arm to stop him.

  “Let her sleep,” she said, taking the pillow from him and tossing it on the bed. “It’s starting to rain.”

  “Are you sure? She’s been here—”

  She placed a finger on his lips. “I’m sure. You too. Stay for the weekend.”

  Len let the suitcase drop to the floor, where he watched it topple over and regurgitate its contents, spilling balled-up socks, rumpled T-shirts, and Birthday Wishes Barbie onto the rug. He glanced at Rachel, who smiled. Neither of them moved. Len said, “I didn’t say anything before…I didn’t want things to change…” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Where does this leave us?”

  She stepped over the suitcase, threaded her arms through his, and pulled him close, laying her head on his chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  CHAPTER 38

  “Janie Jones”

  —THE CLASH

  Being in Tabitha’s bedroom was like being sandwiched between layers of a birthday cake slathered with pink icing. Frothy curtains matched a fizzy bed canopy. Pink shag carpeting drifted across the floor like sugar. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, dripping with cherry and spearmint teardrops, and matching bedside lamps were cloaked in pink leopard fabric.

  Janie had been halfway brave enough to put on the fuchsia nightie. She’d pulled on her flannel bottoms with it. Maybe after the wine, she’d get brave enough to lose the plaid and the army boots.

  “And then, my dad took off Kristina’s garter with his teeth! He put his whole head up her skirt and bit into it.” Tabitha plunked down on a raspberry beanbag. “Right in front of my grandma! It was sickening.”

  “Another vile display of men acting like primates,” said Janie, wrestling with the corkscrew. “It just goes to show…”

  “Show what?”

  Half the cork broke off. Janie unscrewed it from the coiled metal and speared the jagged chunk still lodged in the bottle’s neck. “That men have somehow missed out on the entire process of evolution. They’re stuck somewhere between gorilla and caveman.” The last piece of cork crumbled into small bits, so Janie hammered it inside the bottle and started to fill the glasses to the brims. They chinked their glasses together and said, “Cheers.”

  Tabitha pretend-sipped, then set her glass on last year’s algebra book. Janie didn’t care how bad the wine tasted, she held her breath and gulped down most of the glass. Right away her head spun.

  Janie had waited a long time to be really alone with Tabitha. Whatever happened—or didn’t happen—she’d remember this night, this room, her entire life. You couldn’t officially call yourself a lesbian if all you’d ever had were thoughts, could you? It was the break she’d been needing to launch her gay career for real.

  The thing was, Janie could never make the first move. It was too dangerous. Being rejected by the hottest girl in school was one thing, being rejected by the hottest girl who tells the whole school that you she-tongued her would be the social equivalent of being eaten by a swarm of Olivia’s rattus rattus in an alley—one hantavirus-infected nibble at a time.

  No. Tabitha would have to kiss first.

  “I just hate Kristina,” said Tabitha. “You know what she said to me after the ceremony? ‘Now I’m officially your Evil Stepmother. So you better behave or I’ll make you clean the chimney.’ She thought she was being funny.”

  Janie took another drink. “This Kristina must be stopped,” she said, wincing. “Do you have a candle?”

  Tabitha reached onto her nightstand and pulled down a purple glass cup with a tea light inside. Then she pulled matches from her desk drawer and lit the wick. Janie placed it on the algebra book beside Tabitha’s wineglass.

  “Here’s what you do,” Janie explained. “You swirl your hands above the flame, but always swirling forward and out. Forward and out.”

  “Where’d you learn this?”

  “From some New Age book of my dad’s. It’s Babe-chick’s.”

  “Cool.” Tabitha began swirling.

  “Now imagine Katrina—”

  “Kristina.”

  “Kristina, floating far away and out of your life. When you’ve pushed her far enough away, visualize she’s trapped in a bubble and blow it farther, until it disappears like a balloon. Then, pop! She’s gone.”

  Tabitha squinted and looked toward the window, as if watching Kristina floating through the glass.

  “Close your eyes!” Janie said.

  With her eyes shut, Tabitha repeated Kristina’s voyage away from the earth. Janie studied her friend’s face as she wished her new stepmother into the next galaxy. Tabitha had on peachy-pink lip gloss. Maybe even a little blush. Janie liked to think it was a good sign, that she’d applied it specially for the sleepover. If she’d worn makeup for the wedding, it would have worn off hours ago, right? At least the lip gloss.

  Tabitha opened her eyes and grinned. “Done. Kristina’s history.”

  “Good. We should drink to celebrate.”

  “I want to play Million Trillion. Did you bring the Seer?”

  Janie poured herself more wine and took the troll from her bag, setting him next to the candle. “Turn out all the lights,” she said unsteadily. “The Seer prefers the candlebright. Candlelight.”

  With the room lit only by the flickering candle, the Seer’s penlight having finally given out, Tabitha spoke first. “What would you rather do, Janie Berman? Never be allowed to shave your underarms again or eat a million trillion prunes?”

  Prunes. Janie loved prunes. It was a good thing Tabitha was hot, because the kid sucked at Million Trillion. “Eat the prunes.” Janie downed her wine. “Why aren’t you drinking?”

  Tabitha took a tiny sip. “I am.”

  “Drink again.”

  “I just drank. You drink!”

  Janie drank and set her glass down with a bang. “Okay. What would you rather do? Have sex with skinny Randy Rousseau and get pregnant and be forced to carry his demon spawn for nine months, then move into a musty trailer with Randy and raise the little brat for a million trillion years. Or kiss someone else in the room.”

  Tabitha sipped from her glass, spilling a little on her shirt. “That’s so completely disgusting it should be a Hall-of-Famer!”

  Janie leaned back against the pink wall and tried to look kissable. She shrugged. “I’ve been at this a long time.” Hall-of-Fame Million Trillion Ultimatums. It somehow legitimated the whole thing.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “The Seer is waiting.”

  “All right. Well, I’m definitely not sleeping with Rousseau, so I guess I’d kiss someone in the room—if there were anyone here to kiss.”

  Janie clutched her chest and pulled out an imaginary arrow. “Nice.”

  “You know what I mean. My turn…”

  “No way,” said Janie. “You have to kiss the kiss.”

  “Since when? We didn’t have to follow through last time.”

  Janie glanced around the room, trying to think fast—no simple task in her inebriated state of mind. Her eyes rested on the wine bottle. “Alcohol,” she said. “When alcohol’s involved, the game heats up. Go ahead.”

  Tabitha laughed. “But there’s no one in the room to kiss.”

  Janie did her best to appear frustrated by the tyrannical shackles of the Seer’s rules. “You have to kiss someone, so you might as well go ahead and kiss me.”

  Tabitha giggled, looking away. “Right!”

  “Rules are rules,” said Janie. “The kiss must happen.”

  Tabitha narrowed her eyes and studied Janie’s face. “Okay. But you have to swear, in front of the Seer of All Truths, that you’ll never tell.”

  Janie crossed her heart and bowed down before the Seer, her hair narrowly missing the tea light. As her fore
head rested on the shag, a wave of nausea washed over her, probably the only thing that kept her from grinning like a madman. Madwoman.

  They leaned toward each other. Just as they got close enough to feel each other’s breath, Tabitha backed up and took another drink of wine. “Wait,” she said, swallowing. “I need sustenance.”

  Again, they moved together. When Janie got within an inch of Tabitha’s mouth, she closed her eyes. Then it happened. Their lips met. Touched. Janie felt faint with pleasure and desire and alcohol.

  Janie didn’t know if it was the wine or Tabitha losing her balance, but Tabitha parted her mouth and pushed into the kiss. She wants this as much as I do, Janie thought. She moved closer, exploring Tabitha’s lip with her tongue. She tasted the sweetness of cherry coughdrops mixed with the acidic bite of red wine.

  Just as Janie felt the stiff stiffness of Tabitha’s tongue against her own, Tabitha jumped, sitting back on her heels and wiping her mouth. “What the hell are you doing? You’re making out with me?”

  “No! I—”

  “What? You think I’m some kind of a lesbian?”

  Janie stood up and wavered for a moment, feeling she might throw up. “I don’t think any kind of anything…”

  Standing up, Tabitha kicked the troll doll across the room, then backed away, crawling over her bed and standing on the other side. She started to cry. “This sleepover’s over. Pick up your stuff and go.”

  “Tabitha, relax. It’s just a game. Besides, you’re the one who kissed me.”

  She said nothing, just sobbed into her hands.

  “It’s not so bad…”

  “Get out.”

  “You think I would have kissed you if it was my choice?” asked Janie. “I’d have chosen Rousseau!”

  “I said, GET OUT!”

  Grabbing for her bag, Janie marched toward the door. Halfway across the room, she stopped and turned. The Seer of All Truths had landed on his heels, leaning against the pink wall where Tabitha stood sobbing and clutching her shirt like some kind of fucking rape victim. Janie scooped up the grinning troll and stomped out of the house.

  With a chair pushed in front of the door, Janie dug through her desk drawer for the Zippo lighter she’d stolen from her dad’s house so she could burn her big panties once she lost ten pounds. If she ever lost ten pounds.

  She swiped a pillar candle from a wall sconce and carried it over to her window seat. After lighting the wick, she sat down and closed her eyes, wiping away tears with the heels of her hands. She thought about three things: Tabitha Carlisle had kissed back, Tabitha Carlisle was a total liar of a poseur bitch with a gap in her teeth, and the image of Tabitha Carlisle drifting across the sky in a pink bubble that disappeared over the horizon and popped.

  Her bedroom door creaked, then opened a crack. A crazy halo of reddish hair appeared. “Janie?”

  “Not now.”

  Olivia’s whole body appeared. “Can you teach me the words to that song—’No Feelings’?”

  “I said, not now.”

  Olivia stumbled into the room and sat down under the Jessica Simpson poster, flopping her legs out in front of her. “I tried to know all the words, but Aly & AJ keep jumping into my head. The only word I know of your song is ‘piss.’ ”

  “Olivia, leave me alone. Please! I can’t fucking do this right now…”

  “Callie and Samantha don’t believe you gave me the Sex Pistols.” Olivia’s arms pounded uselessly against the wall behind her. “I told them I actually actually actually really like Johnny Rotten and all they did was laugh at me.” The pounding intensified with each “actually.” “I hate their stupid guts!”

  Janie called, “Mom!”

  “They don’t even know Johnny Rotten is the singer. And they say they’re going to tell the teacher—”

  “Olivia, I’ve actually actually actually had a really bad day. The worst in my whole life. And you’re supposed to be in bed. If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to have to scream…”

  “Did you know a naked mole rat is called a Heterocephalus glaber? And in a whole neighborhood of them, there’s only one mother and father…?”

  “No!” Through the window, Janie saw Tabitha look at her, then yank her blind down.

  Olivia stood up too fast, sliding up the wall. The sound of tearing confused Janie at first. She thought it was coming from Olivia’s clothing or something under her nightgown. It wasn’t until her beloved Jessica Simpson poster fell from the wall in strips that she realized what had happened. That Olivia’s barrettes had sliced Jessica up the middle like a knife.

  “Holy shit, look what you’ve done! You ripped right through her signature—do you know what this thing is worth?”

  Olivia squinted at the torn paper. “Are you still going to come to my birthday party…?”

  “NO! Get the hell out of my room! You never get the hint, do you? Wait, I’ll teach you some of my own words. Can you remember this: ‘You drive me fucking crazy.’ Now get out!”

  Olivia’s lower lip quivered and she raced out of the room. As soon as she was gone, Janie slammed her door and fell on her bed, her body heaving with sobs.

  CHAPTER 39

  The Bat’s Eyeball Winks in the Grass

  The house was quiet. Olivia crawled back into Rachel’s guest bed, scratched at her pajama bottoms, and wondered where her dad was sleeping. Maybe in Dustin’s room. Or Rachel’s. Outside the sky still looked like night—all starry and black. She fell back onto her Dora pillow and closed her eyes. But sleep didn’t come. She needed her dad but Janie was the only person who was up. And Olivia wasn’t going into Janie’s room. Maybe not ever again.

  She sat up again, then crawled along the foot of the bed to her suitcase. From deep inside her case, Olivia noticed a tiny sparkle peeking out of a bag. Her treasure box!

  While her dad was busy packing up her things and he said, “You’re going to stay at Rachel’s house for a few days,” Olivia had snuck out to the backyard with a soup spoon. If she was going to live at Rachel’s house all week, there was no way she was going to leave Georgie Boy behind.

  Now, digging through her sweatpants and underwear, hurling them to the floor, Olivia saw more and more of the plastic bag containing the glittery treasure box and, right next to it, the muddy spoon. She clapped her hands. With the flashlight from under her pillow, she took the spoon and the twinkling box and tiptoed down the stairs, out the back door into the darkness.

  The grave was harder to dig here. The dirt was packed down hard and the spoon kept flicking muck into her eyes. Finally, once the hole was big enough, Olivia poured the gerbil into it. She couldn’t just pick up Georgie Boy with her hands, because part of his tail wasn’t even attached anymore.

  As she spooned dirt and grass clippings over the hole, she heard a noise from the backyard next door. She looked up.

  There was a man standing beside Tabitha’s pool. The same one who talked to Tabitha on the days she wore her bathing suit. His beard looked like the prickly kind and the top of his head was shiny in the moonlight.

  The man took something out of his pocket and used it to unlock the back door, which meant the something was a key. Tabitha and her mother went out a few minutes ago; Olivia saw them drive away. The house was pitch-dark. The man opened the door, then shut it again, and locked it. Then he did it all over again. Unlocked the actual door, opened it, and shut it again, locking it.

  When he was all done, he put the key into his pants again and lit a cigarette with his match. Olivia watched. She liked the way every time the man sucked the cigarette, the end of it burned orange. Like a bat’s eyeball.

  She stayed very still. The man didn’t see her and it was probably a good plan to make sure the man kept right on not seeing her. Then he threw the cigarette into the grass and left. Olivia didn’t move. Not even a finger. She waited until the cigarette started winking, then burned itself out, before spooning more dirt on top of Georgie Boy and sneaking back to bed.

  CHAPTER 4
0

  Empty Shelving

  Back-to-school shopping can be stressful for your children. Plan carefully so you shop at a time of day when they are neither hungry, nor tired. Make them feel this is special time with you.

  —RACHEL BERMAN, Perfect Parent magazine

  There’s nothing left,” wailed Janie, hunting through the bin of damaged binders. Rachel sighed. She didn’t know whether Janie’s recent foul mood had been driven by teenage hormones or back-to-school frustration. The girl had been impossible to deal with since early August.

  “What about this one?” asked Piper, holding up a pink binder with flowers on the spine.

  Janie grimaced. “Would you carry that thing around?”

  Piper tossed it back onto an otherwise empty shelf.

  “Oh, come on. Does it really matter what your binder looks like?” asked Rachel. The belly of the plastic shopping cart was fully occupied by Olivia, sitting cross-legged, wearing a combination SpongeBob toque with attached SpongeBob pencil case. In spite of Len’s repeated offers to unhook hat and case, Olivia insisted on wearing them as a set.

  The last-day-of-summer-vacation celebratory dinner with Len and Olivia—and Piper—had taken slightly longer than expected. Olivia’s meal was switched three times, owing to chicken nuggets that refused to look exactly as they did in the picture on the menu. By the time the check arrived, Olivia was nearly fainting from hunger. Rachel and Len had been forced to stop at McDonald’s before their trip to the drugstore to pick up back-to-school supplies.

  Janie examined a plaid binder and rolled her eyes when the zipper jammed. “I’ll be the only kid in high school without a binder tomorrow. Or click pencils, even!”

  “Never mind, Insanie,” said Dustin, who had just returned from the perfume area, reeking of men’s cologne. “That Cinderella glitter pen makes more of a statement anyway.”