Amandine (3 page)

“Pizza.” Amandine rolled her eyes. “Pizza gives me zits.”

“It doesn’t have to be pizza. Where’s your bag?”

“In my locker, where else?”

“Let’s go get it.”

She yawned an answer. She had been making me uneasy all day. First showing up for school that morning in a full, black-and-white-striped skirt, large gold hoop earrings, and red lipstick. Then ignoring me, not seeking me out at my locker, and being so late to lunch that I had to eat through most of it in excruciating aloneness.

When I finally caught up to her, she acted indifferent. She had been enjoying the attention of her outfit all day, and the spotlight gave Amandine a strange radiance.

“Oh, dress it up, Amandine!” I heard some girls laugh as we walked together down the hall. “Look at that skirt! Woweee!”

“It’s my Natalie Wood from
West Side Story
costume,” she told me offhandedly. “I’d let you borrow it, but we’re different sizes.”

“Oh, well.” I made a show of looking disappointed, although I couldn’t imagine risking the whispers and stares that would follow such a weird costume.

The day before in silent study period, I had overheard girls talking more meanly about Amandine, about her stop-sign-shaped glasses and the green opera gloves she had worn to school last week in place of winter gloves. But nobody was so bold to her face. To her face, Amandine was dealt light teasing or quiet suspicion. Nothing worse. At my old school, treatment might have been different. I wouldn’t have called them a sheep herd, exactly, but the kids here were pretty mild.

As we walked to her locker, she rubbed off most of the lipstick with the back of her hand and pulled up her hair. By the time Mom drove up to collect us, Amandine had transformed herself into a less Hollywood-style, more typical fifties-style girl, her ponytail and puffy skirt swinging as she walked to the car.

“Hi, Mrs. Blaine!” she sang, bubbly and sweet as an ice-cream soda. “I’m Amandine Elroy-Bell. Thanks for letting Delia invite me over to your home for the weekend!”

My mother looked positively joyful. “Why, it’s my pleasure. You know, Delia’s been talking about you all week!”

“Has she? What does she say?” Amandine played out a reaction of joy, then helped herself to the front seat without asking. I took the back, not sure whether to be mortified at Mom’s comment, annoyed at Amandine’s nerve, or relieved that neither of them needed me to be the conversation mediator.

It was obvious that Mom and Amandine would get along just fine.

“You’re rich, huh?”

It was the first thing Amandine had said out of my mother’s earshot. True to her plan, Mom had swung us through the mall for takeout and movie rentals, and only gave me one stern look when Amandine got a skinless chicken Caesar salad while I ordered an individual-sized pepperoni pizza at the takeout. But Mom had said I could have anything, and I could practically hear Mrs. Gogglio, all fired up, telling me that there was no shame in choosing what would sustain my nice strong shape.

After we got home, Mom, probably exhausted by Amandine’s perky, phony questions (“What do you like best about living here, Mrs. Blaine? Have you been to the greenmarket yet? What kinds of flowers are you and Mr. Blaine going to plant?”), disappeared into the study to call work.

“Us? Rich? Not really,” I answered. “We’re just normal.”

“It’s okay. My parents are rich, too. Richer than yours, even, but they put a lot into savings. So it’s not like I’m jealous. Show me your room?”

“Upstairs.”

She followed me, sighing under the weight of her unwieldy bag. It seemed that she had packed a lot of stuff for a single night.

The upstairs was small and all mine, an eaves-sloped bedroom, a bathroom, and another, sealed-off storage space at the end of a short hall.

“Your bedroom is decorated very
bourgeois,”
Amandine pronounced, dropping her bag as she entered it. “Do you know what that word means?”

I made a thoughtful face as if I might. “I like it anyway.”

“Very matchy-match, that’s what it means. You have lots of books, ugh. Books go too slow for my pace. If I have to read, it’s for a play audition.”

She seemed unimpressed by my room, which my parents and I had assembled in two days as soon as I’d confirmed that Amandine would be coming over. Prairie-flower curtains and dust ruffle, an oval rug, and a vase of store-bought flowers. Last night it had looked pretty; now it made me feel dumb and matchy-match.

“What’s down the hall?” she asked.

“The bathroom.”

“No, the other room.”

“That? That’s just my brother’s room,” I said. My words tumbled easy as a throw of the dice. “My older brother,” I added.

“You didn’t tell me you had a brother.” Amandine regarded me with suspicion. “I thought you were like me. An only.”

“I never said that.”

“So where is he?”

“Oh. Where? He’s in college,” I said. It felt as if I was speaking through my nose.

“What’s his name?”

“Ethan. He plays football. My parents really, really miss him, so if you didn’t talk about him, at all I mean, that would be, um, better.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m not allowed to go in his room. It’s locked, anyway.” This part of my story was not a lie. Mom had put a hasp and buckle on the door on account of the exposed fiberglass insulation in the floor and walls. I don’t know what exactly she thought I was going to do—sneak in and roll around in the fiberglass like a horse in clover? But my mother is protective that way. Ever since I could remember, she’d needed to straighten, order, lock, and guard things.

The sound of a car pulling into the driveway interrupted us.

“My dad,” I said, gratefully.

Partly I lied to Amandine about Ethan because I wished it was true. I guess that’s the reason most people lie. But I also lied because I had a feeling that I could get away with it, since Amandine herself was not very careful with the truth.

In fact, throughout that first week of our friendship, Amandine had been serving up some pretty questionable stories. They were always intriguing—like the one about her being chosen for the New York City Ballet Company’s corps de ballet, but then getting shinsplints at the last minute. Or about dancing at a nightclub in Miami where Amandine was on the same dance floor as Madonna, and Madonna started copying her dance moves, and then everyone started copying Madonna, so she, Amandine, ended up not getting any credit for them. Or about how she had rescued a cat from the branch of a tree that was so high up and delicate that not even a fireman could get to it, but then the cat had scratched up Amandine’s arm. Bloodied it so badly that she’d immortalized it in her notebook of Ugliest Things. She had shown me this drawing as “proof.” She had used red nail polish for blood gashes, and the effect was pretty disgusting.

Fun to hear, but hard to imagine. And no matter what the setting, Amandine always flitted through it in the same role, as a nymph and a victim bruised by some minor cruelty. Which wasn’t how the real Amandine was at all.

So what was one imaginary brother, tucked away in the setting of some far-off college? (I would make it Seattle or San Francisco, if she asked!) As soon as I’d dared it, though, the weight of my lie made me feel as if I had a raw egg balanced on my head. One misstep, and this dumb story would splatter. My parents would think I’d gone nuts, and worse, Amandine would know my lonely secret, something about me that seemed too private to have given her.

It was too late now.

“The much-anticipated Miss Amandine Elroy-Bell!” my father called up the stairs as soon as he walked in the door. “Reveal yourself!”

Amandine’s eyes widened. She took out her cakey red lipstick and blotted it over her mouth. Then fluttered down the stairs, holding a pose midway, actress-style.

“
Mis
-ter Blaine, the pleasure is all mine!” It was as if a TNT movie star had leaped off the screen and into our home. I clumped behind her at a distance. Dad’s face couldn’t hide his surprise, but since he was the one who had begun the silly movie talk, he sort of had to keep it going.

“What an utterly charming skirt!”

“This little old thing? Don’t be silly. But you do know how to make a girl feel pretty,
Mis
-ter Blaine!”

Mom had entered the front hall. Her hand limply held her cell phone, her eyebrow quirked as she watched them.

“Hello, Daniel,” she said.

“Hello,
Mis
-sus Blaine!” Dad copied Amandine’s inflection while quickly turning away from her. He swung Mom into a big hug and a gobbling kiss that immediately embarrassed everyone, Dad included.

“The girls are having takeout, but I thought you and I …” Mom’s voice lowered as she and he began their routine arm-in-arm stroll into the study for quiet time. I tugged at Amandine’s wrist.

“Hey, let me show you out back, where we have a—”

She shook off my hand, hopped down a few steps. “Aren’t we all eating together?” she called sharply after my parents. “As a family?”

My ears strained through the silence that followed. I washed it out with my own whisper. “Amandine, I don’t usually … it wouldn’t be as fun … with them.”

“Is that what you’d like, Amandine?” My mother spoke up in her best Boston-hostess voice. Yet I could hear that she was annoyed.

“It’s what I
thought,”
Amandine answered in a cold, adult voice of her own. As if the power of what she assumed should be enough to change what had been planned.

Mom set dinner for four in the dining room. Silverware and linen napkins and bread rolls for everyone, takeout for us, and quail and creamed spinach for my parents. Amandine even dressed for it by donning a short black jacket, the kind that bullfighters wear. Plus more lipstick and dark rings of eyeliner that made her face look hungry.

I tried on some of her lipstick, pressing it deep into my lips, tasting its wax.

“You’re not ready for that color,” she said, laughing when she saw. “You should stick to pink. How do I look?” She sucked in her cheeks and arched her neck.

“Fine, I guess. Who cares?”

She laughed again and brushed past me, heading down the stairs.

I followed. I was nervous of my freshly leaked lie. I chewed my tongue and hoped nobody would ask the wrong questions, and I silently practiced my defensive answers, if it came to that.

“I brought
Carmen,”
Amandine announced to my parents as soon as we sat down. “With Teresa Berganza, on DVD. Shall I put it on? Do you have a DVD player? Do you even like opera?” The last question was a bit wistful.

“Why, yes, that would be just … perfect, Amandine.” My mother looked surprised, then pleased. “It’s in the living room, dear. In that silver-and-wood-paneled cabinet. You’ll have to raise the volume so that we can hear it in here.”

Amandine nodded. As her jacket fell open, I saw that she had brought the discs down with her, slipped into an inside pocket. I also saw that at some point she had changed from her black blouse to a sexy, plunge-necked black leotard. Although there was nothing much to see, the leotard humiliated me as much as if I were wearing it, instead.

She skipped out of the room, and I glanced at my parents to see if they were shocked, exasperated, anything, but they were speaking quietly to each other.

“Carmen,”
Mom mused to Dad. “I’ve always preferred it to
Romeo and Juliet.”

“I haven’t heard it in ages.”

“Oh, let’s light the candles!” Amandine exclaimed when she returned.

Dad jumped out of his seat for his Brookstone electric lighter kept in the sideboard drawer. Then he dimmed the lights and lit both candelabras.

“Ah, that’s wonderful! I forget what candlelight does to a room.” Mom clasped her hands together and held them under her chin.

It did look pretty. The icy March twilight outside; the warm, golden firelight inside; and all of us gathered together while
Carmen
washed in at a soothing distance. A family, Amandine had said. And it made me sort of angry, though I couldn’t have said exactly why.

“This is the first time I ever ate in here,” I blurted.

“Stands to reason. We’ve been here less than a month,” said Dad. “And Miss Amandine is our first special occasion.” He smirked across the table at Amandine, giving her his lawless Operator’s smirk. As if he were teasing her and complimenting her at the same time.

“Who, little old me?” she asked, pointing a finger at herself.

I wished she would stop with all that. The way she talked to my dad was worse than the way she talked to my mom. Fussy and chirpy was one thing, but flirty was another. She should know better than to talk to other people’s dads this way. It was alarming.

My parents were unalarmed. They drank up Amandine as if she were an entertainment or an amusement, like the special red wine they treated themselves to in the summer. Even when, at one point, Amandine put down her fork and began to sing along with the opera—which made me shiver slightly, it was too weird—they did not react except to smile and listen, their heads tilted like birds.

I could almost hear Dad say
“Young
and refreshing! Just bold enough!”

After dinner, we parted—Amandine and I to the living room to watch movies, and my parents to clean up the kitchen.

Later, while I was fixing a tray of fruit and cookies in the pantry, Mom caught me around my shoulders and drew me into a clumsy hug. “Such fun!” she whispered in my ear. “She’s a water sprite, your little friend.”

“Kind of unpredictable,” I said. Though I didn’t quite know if I was referring to Amandine or my mother’s reaction to her.

We both slept in my bed, on opposite sides. I wasn’t used to sharing my bed, it made me nervous, and when my toe accidentally touched Amandine’s leg, she judo-kicked me.

“Sorry,” I said, although it was all her fault.

“Good night,” she answered stiffly. I supposed she didn’t want to share the bed any more than I did. I wished she had brought a sleeping bag. A sleeping bag was kind of the rule of a sleepover, and I didn’t get how Amandine could have forgotten this.

“Your parents wouldn’t like it if I broke in and slept in your brother’s room, huh?” she hissed after a few more shifting, twisting minutes.