Choker (8 page)

“Scissors, a mirror, a flatiron, and the blow-dryer,” Zoe called over her shoulder. “Madonna! Perfect.” “Like a Virgin” filled the room. “Like a virgin, touched for the very first time,” Madonna sang.

Oh, perfect for me,
Cara thought as she extracted the flatiron from the back of the sink cabinet. “My parents are going to think I’ve turned into someone else,” she said. “I hardly ever listen to that one.”

“They won’t come up here, will they?” Zoe sounded a little worried. She turned the music down a notch.

Cara tugged the flatiron hard from the cabinet, knocking over several shampoo bottles in the process. “No, don’t worry,” she called back, spitting her hair from her face. “My mom actually heard us the other day—but she thinks I’m talking in my sleep. Anyway, she’s more than happy buried in her office downstairs.” She rose to her feet and blew some dust off the flatiron. “Here.” She handed it to Zoe. “I haven’t used it in, um, maybe ever. And look, I even found a mascara and some lip gloss. They’re probably a hundred years old.”

“Okay, then this is the start of your new life.” Zoe arranged Cara in front of her dresser mirror and spread a towel over her shoulders. She poised a pair of scissors.

“Wait!” Cara clutched at her friend’s hand. “You’re going to cut it dry?”

“Of course. That’s what all the top stylists do.” Zoe sounded supremely confident. She easily broke her hand from Cara’s grasp. “You’ll look great with a buzz cut. I’ll just get some clippers—”

“What!”

Zoe laughed. “Kidding! Now, shut up and relax. It’s going to be amazing.”

Cara closed her eyes as Zoe snipped a lock of hair at the back. She was going fast. The chunks of hair falling to the floor felt ominously heavy, but Cara refused to open her eyes. She heard Zoe put the scissors down and the cold mist of spray on her head. Then Zoe’s firm fingers fluffing her hair, and the click as the flatiron warmed up. “Even though you have straight hair, the iron will get rid of all that frizz and make it shiny,” Zoe said as she closed the hot plates on a section of hair.

“Ah! It’s hot!” Cara gasped, squeezing her eyes, still tightly shut. She smelled the acrid stench of burning hair. “Oh God, don’t burn my hair off, Zoe,” she begged.

“Sorry, sorry! I’m turning it down,” Zoe said. She methodically moved around Cara’s head. After a few more minutes, she drew the iron away. “Okay, that’s it. Open.”

Cara opened her eyes. There in the mirror was a girl with a plain, pale face like her own, but now capped with a rough, messy bob. It was kind of rocker-girl cool. She turned her head slowly. “Wow,” she said. Zoe had even managed to make the top look fuller. Long bangs were sideswept across her forehead.

“Wait, wait! This is the finishing touch.” Zoe leaned over and applied a light coat of mascara to Cara’s stick-straight lashes and a dot of berry lip gloss. “Just a little. You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard.”

Cara got up from the chair slowly. “Zo, this is amazing. I never knew my hair could look like this.”

Zoe beamed. “I know, right? You’re just like Kristen Stewart.” She bent over the magazine she’d been looking at when Cara came in and flipped the wrinkled pages. “There, see?”

Cara peered over her shoulder. Kristen was standing on a red carpet in a long navy silk dress, turned to one side, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yeah, you’re right.” There was a vague resemblance between the actress’s big dark eyes and delicate cheekbones and her own.

Zoe jumped up. “But the clothes . . .” She flung open Cara’s closet.

Cara looked down at her faded bathrobe. “What about my clothes?”

“Cara.” Zoe spoke patiently as if addressing someone with limited intelligence. “You can’t go around with that awesome new haircut wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt.”

“I like that sweatshirt,” Cara mumbled.

“I know,” Zoe said soothingly. “It’s a relic. But, Car, we have to do something about your clothes. Come on, don’t you have anything else in here?” She pawed past three years of track T-shirts, a pilly black cotton turtleneck, four hooded cotton sweatshirts in various shades of gray. “You’re a fan of variety, apparently.” Zoe eyed the sweatshirts before pulling a clingy green top from the back. Tags dangled under the sleeve. “Ah-hah! What’s this?”

Cara winced. “Oh God, that’s nothing. Something Mom found on sale. She goes on these shopping rampages, trying to fix me up. I’ve never worn it.”

Zoe tossed it into her lap. “You’re wearing it now. And these.” She held up Cara’s best black ballet flats.

Cara hesitated and then yanked her sweatshirt over her head, mussing her new haircut. “I’m going to feel weird wearing this to school.” Zoe tossed her a pair of dark skinny jeans, and she pulled them on. “What do you think?” The fabric of the shirt clung, outlining her chest and abdomen. The draped neck showed off her collarbone, which Cara always found embarrassingly prominent, like a coat hanger.

Zoe perused her, looking Cara up and down, as if she were a livestock buyer examining a prime steer at auction. Cara crossed her arms in front of her, oddly self-conscious. “Maybe if you stood up straighter, and kept your chin up more.” She stood up and struck a pose in front of the mirror—shoulders thrown back, hands on her hips. She turned her head and eyed Cara coolly. “Come on, try it.”

Cara got up from her stool reluctantly. She stood next to Zoe, her arms hanging limply at her sides. “I feel stupid,” she said.

Zoe grabbed her arms as though they were strands of spaghetti and shook them. “Come on! Look, this will help you around Ethan. Now try it.” She posed again, and Cara put her own hands on her hips, mimicking her.

“Shoulders back,” Zoe instructed. “Now hips out a little more.
InStyle
says you can look five pounds lighter that way.”

Cara arranged her body in the required posture. She looked at herself in the mirror. Zoe stood next to her, and for the first time, Cara realized they were exactly the same height and weight. With their dark hair and light eyes, they looked like two mirror images standing there.

“Okay, now repeat after me,” Zoe said. “‘Hi, Ethan.’” Her voice was airy and smooth.

“Hi, Ethan,” Cara repeated obediently.

“No, no. Like you don’t care,” Zoe told her. “And keep your shoulders back. Like this.” She demonstrated.

Cara straightened her spine. “Hi, Ethan.” She tried a breezy little smile.

“That’s better! Okay, now try this: ‘Great meet yesterday.’”

Cara repeated her line. She raised her eyebrows at Zoe in the mirror hopefully.

Zoe furrowed her brow. “You’re almost getting it. But something’s not quite right. Here, say it with me: ‘Hi, Ethan. Great meet yesterday.’”

Cara repeated the words along with Zoe.

“Again!” Zoe instructed.

Over and over, they said the sentence together, gazing into the mirror. Cara’s voice blended with Zoe’s until she couldn’t tell whether she was speaking or Zoe was.

Chapter 9

T
HE TRAINING ROOM WAS QUIET WHEN CARA PUSHED
open the door at six thirty the next morning. She liked to get in early to stretch before everyone else arrived—it was a good time to decompress before all the stress of the school day started. There was something so relaxing about being in the little cinder block room alone, with the heat blowing from the ceiling vents and the smell of Pine-Sol from the janitor’s cleaning the night before.

She hated to admit it, but a teeny part of her was happy to have a few minutes completely to herself. She and Zoe had been having a lot of fun, but she’d never shared her room before, and it wasn’t the hugest space in the world. She’d tried to explain why she liked coming to the training room to Zoe when she left the house half an hour earlier, but Zoe had just squinted at her, looking hurt, before rolling over and pressing her face into the pillow.

The small room seemed overly warm today. In fact, it was like a freaking sauna, Cara thought, as she let the door swing shut behind her. She dropped her gym bag on the bench and examined the thermostat on the wall. Eighty-three degrees. Jesus. Like Saudi Arabia. She tried to dial it back, but the thing was impossible to move. What the hell? Was this some new sadistic training trick of Coach Sanders’s?

Cara could already feel a trickle of sweat trailing down her back as she collapsed on one of the floor mats to stretch. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and pitched it in the direction of her bag, then stretched both legs out in front of her and bent toward her knees. The air felt odd flowing over the newly naked back of her neck. God, her hamstrings were tight this morning. She pressed her spine a little farther toward her legs.

She was going to debut her new look this morning, the green shirt and makeup tucked in her bag for after her shower.
Don’t worry,
Zoe had told her before she had left.
No one’s going to say anything mean. I just know
. And the funny thing was, Cara believed her. Zoe always just knew. Like when Cara’s new kitten wouldn’t stop peeing in the living room fireplace when she was eight. Her parents told her they’d have to give Tennessee away, and she sobbed for hours. But then Zoe told her that she shouldn’t worry, that Tennessee would get to stay, she just knew it—and she was right. It turned out he simply didn’t like his litter box. Once they got him a different kind, he was fine. Cara sighed and reached for her ankles. Well, Tenny was gone now. Replaced by fat, ugly Samson.

The training room door banged open. Cara looked up to see Ethan barreling in, a distracted look on his face. He stopped short when he saw her. “Oh, hi,” he said. “I, ah, didn’t know anyone else was here.” A faint flush crept into his cheeks as his gaze traveled from her face down to her bare shoulders. Cara snatched up her T-shirt and pressed it to her chest. Her ears grew hot.

Ethan turned. “I can leave,” he said. “I was just grabbing my spikes.” He took them out of his locker and went over to the door.

“No, no!” Cara pulled her T-shirt over her head. She frantically searched for something to say, anything so he wouldn’t leave. She took a deep breath. Now was the time.

“Great meet yesterday,” she said, just as she’d practiced with Zoe, with the right mix of airiness and confidence. The fact that she’d gotten a sentence out around Ethan, something she’d seemed incapable of doing before, gave her the courage to go on. “Was that last runner killer in the relay, like Coach said?”

Ethan sat down on a bench nearby and leaned over, resting his forearms on his knees, the spikes dangling from his hands. His shoulders pushed at the fabric of his gray T-shirt.

“Yeah, he was tough,” Ethan replied. “I remember that guy, actually. I think I ran against him last season, too. He used to go to Country Day.”

“Guess he’s just following you around,” Cara said with a smirk. She didn’t know what had come over her, but suddenly she wasn’t feeling uncomfortable anymore. Maybe it was the thickness in the air, which had made her muscles loosen immediately. If only all of high school could take place in a sauna.

Ethan grinned and nodded. “Seriously. Too bad I beat him again.” A rubber band was looped around one of his wrists, and Cara couldn’t take her eyes off it. Ethan’s face grew serious. “Hey, by the way, Sydney lived next door to you, right?”

“Yeah,” she said slowly, wondering where he was going with this.

“Did you see her, you know, that night?”

Cara flashed on Sydney’s laughing face, staggering around the pool. White jeans floating in the water. Part of her wanted to talk about what happened, but she didn’t know how to tell Ethan what she’d seen without revealing she’d been watching the whole time. “No. I went to bed early.”

He nodded. “I was just wondering. Alexis is really upset still.”

Cara stiffened at the mention of Alexis, but Ethan didn’t seem to notice. He was rummaging through his gym bag. Then he rose from the bench and tossed his spikes over his shoulder. “I’ve got to go finish some of that Euro History reading from yesterday. It’s taking me forever.”

“I know. Me too,” Cara lied. She’d blown through it in about an hour last night, Zoe next to her on the bed, painting her toenails a violent green.

Ethan turned around again, his hand on the doorknob. “Nice talking with you, Cara. You’re always so quiet at practice.”

Cara could feel her face go scarlet. “Yeah, that’s kind of my default state.”

Ethan grinned. “See you later. By the way, your hair looks cute that way,” he called over his shoulder as the door slowly closed behind him.

Cara fell back on the mats, her hands clasped over her hammering heart. She laid there for a good ten minutes, waiting for her body to recover. “Oh my God,” she said to the ceiling tiles. An entire conversation with Ethan Gray—and he saw her in her sports bra—
and
he gave her
two
compliments.

Cara rose from the mat and made her way toward the showers on unsteady legs. Next Prince William was going to call from England and ask her to marry him.

Cara fluffed the back of her hair for the twentieth time as she stood in the doorway to the cafeteria. The noisy chatter rose from within. But instead of the usual sick feeling spreading through her stomach, she felt only the bubbly remnants of her encounter with Ethan that morning.

“Cute shirt, Cara,” someone said behind her. She turned around to see Sarit standing behind her, holding something that looked like a long, foil-wrapped relay baton.

“Thanks!” Cara glowed and adjusted the clingy hem. Sarit was the third person who’d noticed her new look. In English, a girl she didn’t know told her she liked her shoes. “Hey, um, what is that?” She pointed to the foil baton-thing.

“Oh.” Sarit looked slightly embarrassed. “A dosa. It’s like a giant pancake. My mom makes them. By the way, that was an awesome finish yesterday,” she went on as they crossed the cafeteria.
Like actual friends
. Oh God, this was pitiful. But Cara couldn’t help it. She knew her face was wearing a big sloppy grin.

“Oh, I didn’t win,” Cara pointed out. They turned into the food line, and she grabbed a tray from the stack, setting a peanut butter sandwich and an applesauce on it. Best to keep away from any foods she could choke on. That was the only thing that could ruin her winning streak today.