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“And that really tells you something.”
Not necessarily. But I don’t have the energy to contradict her.
All of a sudden, even though I know this isn’t really about me, I feel a thundering sense of loss. Maggie and Walt and I were a unit. For the past couple of years, we went everywhere together. We’d sneak into the country club at night and steal golf carts, and cooling off a six-pack of beer in a stream, we’d talk and talk and talk about everything from quarks to who Jen P was dating. What’s going to happen to the three of us now? Because somehow I can’t imagine Peter taking Walt’s place in our corny adventures.
“I guess I have to break up with Walt,” Maggie says. “But I don’t know how. I mean, what am I supposed to say?”
“You could try telling him the truth.”
“Carrie?” she asks in a wheedling tone. “I was wondering if maybe you could—”
“What? Break up with him? You want me to break up with Walt for you?”
“Just kind of prepare him,” Maggie says.
Maggie and Peter? I can’t think of two people who belong together less. Maggie is so flighty and emotional. And Peter is so serious. But maybe their personalities cancel each other out.
I pull into the parking lot of the Hamburger Shack, turn off the car, and think, Poor Walt.
The Hamburger Shack is one of the few restaurants in town, known for its hamburgers topped with grilled onions and peppers. That’s pretty much considered the height of cuisine around here. People in Castlebury are mad for grilled onions and peppers, and while I do love the smell, Walt, who has to man the onion and pepper grill, says the stench makes him sick. It gets into his skin and even when he’s sleeping, all he dreams about are onions and peppers.
I spot Walt behind the counter by the grill. The only other customers are three teenage girls with hair dyed in multiple hues of pink, blue, and green. I nearly walk past them when suddenly I realize that one of these punks is my sister.
Dorrit is eating an onion ring as if everything is perfectly normal. “Hi, Carrie,” she says. Not even a “Do you like my hair?” She picks up her milk shake and drains the glass with a loud slurp.
“Dad’s going to kill you,” I say. Dorrit shrugs. I look at her friends, who are equally apathetic. “Get out to the car. I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
“I’m not done with my onion rings,” she says with equanimity. I hate the way my sister won’t listen to authority, especially my authority.
“Get in the car,” I insist, and walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to talk to Walt.”
Walt’s wearing a stained apron and there’s sweat on his hairline. “I hate this job,” he says, lighting up a cigarette in the parking lot.
“But the hamburgers are good.”
“When I get out of here, I never want to see another hamburger in my life.”
“Walt,” I say. “Maggie—”
He cuts me off.“She didn’t go to her sister’s in Philadelphia.”
“How do you know?”
“Number one, how many times does she visit her sister? Once a year? And number two, I know Maggie well enough to know when she’s lying.”
I wonder if he knows about Peter, as well. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing, I guess. I’ll wait for her to break up with me and that’ll be it.”
“Maybe you should break up with her.”
“Too much effort.” Walt tosses his cigarette into the bushes. “Why should I bother when the result will be the same either way?”
Walt, I think, is sometimes a bit passive.
“But maybe if you did it first—”
“And save Maggie from feeling guilty? I don’t think so.”
My sister walks by with her new Day-Glo hair. “You’d better not let Dad catch you smoking,” she says.
“Listen, kid. First of all, I wasn’t smoking. And secondly, you’ve got bigger things to worry about than cigarettes. Like your hair.”
As Dorrit gets into the car, [A-Z]alt shakes his head. “My little brother’s just like her. The younger generation—they’ve got no respect.”
CHAPTER NINE The Artful Dodger (#ulink_4d688cf9-a886-5ae9-9fdb-589d4bb9a4d7)
When Dorrit and I get home, my poor father takes one look at Dorrit’s hair and nearly passes out. Then he goes into her room to have a talk with her. That’s the worst, when my father comes into your room for a talk. He tries to make you feel better, but it never quite works that way. He usually goes into some long story about something that happened to him when he was a kid, or else makes references to nature, and sure enough, that’s what he does with Dorrit.
Dorrit’s door is closed, but our house is a hundred and fifty years old, so you can hear every word of any conversation if you stand outside the door. Which is exactly what Missy and I do.
“Now, Dorrit,” my dad says.“I suspect your actions concerning your, ah, hair are indirectly related to overpopulation, which is something that is increasingly becoming a problem on our planet. Which was not meant to sustain these vast clusters of people in limited spaces…and tends to result in these mutilations of the human body—piercings, dyeing the hair, tattoos…It’s human instinct to want to stand out, and it manifests itself in more and more extreme measures. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No.”
“What I mean,” he continues, “is that you must do all you can to resist these unwarranted instincts. The successful human being is able to conquer his unwanted and unwise desires. Am I making myself clear?”
“Sure, Dad,” Dorrit says sarcastically.
“In any event, I still love you,” my father says, which is the way he ends all his talks. And then he usually cries. And then you feel so horrible, you vow never to upset him again.
This time, however, the crying bit is interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Please, let it be Sebastian, I pray, while Missy grabs it. She puts her hand slyly over the receiver. “Carrie? It’s for you. It’s a guy.”
“Thanks,” I say coolly. I take the phone into my room and close the door.
It has to be him. Who else could it be?
“Hello?” I ask casually.
“Carrie?”
“Yes?”
“It’s George.”
“George,” I say, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
“You got home okay?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I had a great time on Saturday night. And I was wondering if you’d like to get together again.”
I don’t know. But he’s asked too politely to refuse. And I don’t want to hurt his feelings. “Okay.”
“There’s a nice country inn between here and Castlebury. I thought maybe we could go next Saturday.”
“Sounds great.”
“I’ll pick you up around seven. We’ll have dinner at eight and I can get you home by eleven.”
We hang up and I go into the bathroom to examine my face. I have a sudden desire to radically alter my appearance. Maybe I should dye my hair pink and blue like Dorrit’s. Or turn it into a pixie cut. Or bleach it white blond. I pick up a lip pencil and begin outlining my lips. I fill in the middle with red lipstick and turn the corners of my mouth down. I draw two black tears on my cheeks and step back to check the results.
Not bad.
I take my sad-clown face into Dorrit’s room. Now she’s on the phone. I can tell by her side of the conversation that she’s comparing notes with one of her friends. She bangs down the receiver when she spots me.
“Well?” I ask.
“Well what?”
“What do you think about my makeup? I was thinking of wearing it to school.”
“Is that supposed to be some kind of comment about my hair?”
“How would you feel if I showed up at school tomorrow looking like this?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Bet you would.”
“Why are you being so mean?” Dorrit shouts.
“How am I being mean?” But she’s right. I am being mean. I’m in a mean, foul mood.
And it’s all because of Sebastian. Sometimes I think all the trouble in the world is caused by men. If there were no men, women would always be happy.
“C’mon, Dorrit. I was only kidding.”
Dorrit puts her hands on top of her head. “Does it really look that bad?” she whispers.
My sad-clown face no longer feels like a joke.
When my mother first got sick, Dorrit would ask me what was going to happen. I’d put on a smiley face because I read somewhere that if you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy. “Whatever happens, we’re all going to be fine,” I’d tell Dorrit.
“Promise?”
“Of course, Dorrit. You’ll see.”
“Someone’s here,” Missy calls out now. Dorrit and I look at each other, our little tiff forgotten.
We clatter down the stairs. There, in the kitchen, is Sebastian. He looks from my sad-clown face to Dorrit’s pink and blue hair. And slowly, he shakes his head.
“If you’re going to be around Bradshaws, you have to be prepared.There could be craziness. Anything might happen.”
“No kidding,” Sebastian says. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, the same one he was wearing at Tommy Brewster’s party and on the night we painted the barn—the night we first kissed.
“Do you always wear that jacket?” I ask as Sebastian downshifts on the curve leading to the highway.
“Don’t you like it? I got it when I lived in Rome.”
I suddenly feel like I’ve been swept under a wave. I’ve been to Florida and Texas and all around New England, but never to Europe. I don’t even have a passport. I sure wish I had one now, though, so I’d know how to deal with Sebastian. They should make passports for relationships.
A guy who’s lived in Rome. It sounds so romantic.
“What are you thinking?” Sebastian asks.
I’m thinking that you probably won’t like me because I’ve never been to Europe and I’m not sophisticated enough. “Have you ever been to Paris?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “Haven’t you?”
“Not really.”
“That sounds like being a little bit pregnant. You either have been or you haven’t.”
“I haven’t been there in person. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been there in my mind.”
He laughs. “You are a very strange girl.”
“Thank you.” I look out the window to hide my tiny smile. I don’t care if he thinks I’m strange. I’m just so happy to see him.
I don’t ask him why he hasn’t called. I don’t ask him where he’s been. When I found him in my kitchen, leaning against the counter like he belonged there, I pretended it was perfectly natural, not even a surprise. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, like it wasn’t odd that he suddenly decided to show up.
“Depends on what you call interrupting.” My insides were filled with diamonds, suddenly illuminated by the sun.
“Do you want to go out?”
“Sure.” I ran upstairs and scrubbed off my clown face, knowing all the while I should have said no, or at least allowed myself to be convinced, because what girl agrees to go on a date spur of the moment like that? It sets a bad precedent, makes the guy think he can see you whenever he wants, treat you however he wants. But I didn’t have it in me to refuse. As I pulled on my boots, I wondered if I’d come to regret being so easy.
I’m not regretting it now, though. Who makes up those rules about dating, anyway? And why can’t I be exempt?
He puts his hand on my leg. Casually. Like we’ve been dating for a long time. If we were, I wonder if his hand on my leg would always produce the reaction I’m having now, which is a confused sort of divine giddiness. I decide it would. I can’t imagine ever not feeling like this when I’m with him.
I’m losing it.
