My Almost Epic Summer (15 page)

I kick off my travels in Venezuela next week. And then it’s on to Guatemala for a tour of the Mayan ruins. I’m assured that Internet cafes have cropped up everywhere. So look for my postings!

And thank you, again, Irene dear, for knowing exactly what literary lifeline to throw me. I feel reborn. I am always amazed by the power of a classic!

With affection—

Sister Soledad

 

I decide to save that letter in my archives, because Sister’s bravery seems important to remember. Though I can hardly imagine Sister Soledad being born the first time, let alone reborn.

And all because of
On the Road.
Someday I’ll reread that book.

When I look over e-mails I’ve sent to Whit, I notice that sometimes my tone shifts to the style of the Heroine I am admiring at the time. But Starla always stays Starla. She knows who she is and what she wants, and she doesn’t hide it. Sometimes that works even better than school smarts. I wish I could explain this to her in a way that doesn’t seem condescending. Instead, I send her the link for Style to Go, which is as close as I dare to a tacit agreement on the bargain haircut.

My weeks away from Style to Go have matured me into a slightly better employee. The trick, I discover, is to repeat everything out loud. Especially when on the telephone, which is where Mom has assigned me so that I’m never actually dealing with hair.

“You said Tuesday?” I ask.

“That’s right.”

“Tuesday, August fifteenth?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Could you spell your last name again?”

“Okay, Ms. Miller, I am confirming a double process for Tuesday, August fifteenth—”

And then Starla walks in, and before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve hung up.

“Hi.” It’s been almost a month since I’ve seen her. She is wearing an oversized white button-down shirt, belted, and sandals. Not many people I know could make this outfit work. In fact, nobody.

“I need a fierce cut,” she says. “My hair’s too long. I thought since you never gave me my ten dollars that day, you could shave the difference off the price.”

I nod yes as the smitten Bella swirls Starla into a black robe. “You’ve got awesome hair,” she oozes. “It’s a little dry. I’m gonna give you a special deep conditioning pack, it’s made with apple cider and mint, free of charge. Then Beth Ann will have a consultation with you about the cut.”

“My mom,” I explain.

Starla allows herself to be led to the sinks.

“You girls are friends from school?” Mom beams over at Starla as she shellacs a final coat of spray on Mrs. Irwin’s curls. “I can give you a great back-to-school look when I’m finished,” she calls out. “With some long layering on the sides—”

“Fierce,” Starla repeats.

“Fierce, got it.” Mom nods. “Choppy, but flattering angles. We’ll use a razor.”

“I want to start the year off brand-new,” Starla says once she’s been washed and seated.

I sit down in the chair next to her and swivel it so that I’m facing her like a talk-show host. “My friend Whitney is coming home tomorrow and—”

But Starla has grabbed a pair scissors out of the sanitizing jar. All at once, she chops off a hunk of hair, right in the front. “Maybe you can start from that,” she tells Mom.

Everyone—Mom, me, Bella, Marianne and Mrs. Irwin— gasps. We stare at the stump of hair that now spikes directly off Starla’s forehead.

Marianne breaks the horrified silence with a laugh. “Well, now, Beth Ann. That’s a challenge.”

“My goodness!” On her way out the door, Mrs. Irwin scowls disapprovingly at Starla. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

Starla does look pleased.

Mom lets the rest of us watch as she cuts Starla’s hair into a style that would never go into my old notebook. Nobody speaks. We watch the black ends fall into a magic circle around the chair. When Bella comes by with the broom, a few strands blow up and stick to my ankles and underneath my flip-flops.

How weird would I be if I saved some of Starla’s hair?

I put the thought out of my mind. Starla just won’t stop inspiring my inner creepster.

It takes twice the time of a regular haircut, and when Mom is finished, I can see in her face that she’s dissatisfied. Still, she unsnaps the robe with her usual flourish and hands Starla a mirror so that she can get a view of the back. Starla tilts this way and that.

“You like it?” asks Mom. “I was trying for French punk.”

“It’s crazy ugly, right?” Starla asks.

Only it’s not crazy or ugly. Not on Starla Malloy. Without all her hair, Starla’s eyes look twice as large. Her cheekbones appear broader, her neck swans up that much longer, and there is something delicate and vulnerable in her face that I hadn’t seen before.

“Well, it’s fierce,” Mom pronounces doubtfully. “Like you wanted. And I had to cut a lot, to match what you started. But you’ve got amazing bone structure. You could wear any style, really.”

“Nothing would look wrong on you,” adds Bella.

Starla doesn’t say anything. For a moment, she seems heartbroken. Then she jumps out of the chair and reaches for her bag, snapping open her wallet as I run to the register to take care of her bill.

“Maybe I’ll see you in school?” Without asking Mom, I cut the ten dollars off the price.

“Sure,” she answers, though we both doubt it. Summertime is different than school time. In summer, days melt, rules bend, and grades merge until it’s September again, when time refreezes back into its own set of countdowns, its chunks of classes and cliques and schedules. It won’t be long before I’m in the school cafeteria with Britta and Whitney, listening to Whit explain the calorie count on our cheese fries, while Starla sits at her scary-cool table with friends I’d be too shy to talk to.

But watching Starla go, I feel wrenched, and for a moment, I imagine us as school friends, laughing in the hallway, signaling secret jokes while other kids wonder jealously how I, a lowly freshman without a swimming pool or driver’s permit or anything special, could claim any part of Starla Malloy’s attention.

Starla and I could never be friends. But watching her go, I feel wrenched.

“Bye,” I say.

“Bye, Irene,” she mutters under her breath as she pushes out into the heat. I’d never heard Starla say my name before.

“What a beautiful girl,” says Mom.

“Beauty is not a need,” I say, “but an ecstasy.” My quote leaves nobody impressed. “Keats,” I add, entirely for my own benefit.

“What do you think she is?” asks Bella. “Italian, Spanish, Egyptian—what?”

“Lord knows. Little bit of all of it. You can’t even look too long at a girl that gorgeous,” adds Marianne as she settles back in her booth. “It’s like staring into an eclipse.”

Mom lets out one of her classic snorts.

Starla crosses the street, her head down, her fingertips rubbing the stubble at her forehead. Her shoulders slouch, dejected, and it strikes me that the “ecstasy” part of Starla’s beauty is reaped exclusively by the people who get to stare at her and make judgments.

“Girls that pretty are the luckiest girls in the world,” declares Bella. “Imagine how it’d be if you had everyone looking at you and admiring you every single minute of the day?”

“The easy life,” says Marianne.

“Problem free,” Mom agrees.

They all stare out the storefront window, slightly peeved, as if Starla has sneaked something past them. Only I know different. “Believe me, she has exactly the same problems,” I say as I watch her turn the corner and disappear.

 

 

 

WHEN LAINIE GETS back from Florida, I call over to the Priors and ask Judith if I can come visit for the day.

“I’m sure she’d love it,” says Judith. “You know, Irene, for the life of me sometimes I couldn’t figure out why, but that girl just adores you.”

“Judith, I’m really sorry about her arm, and for having those kids over and everything.”

She sighs. “We all make mistakes. But I have to say, there were times that you were irresponsible.”

“I know.”

“It wasn’t lost on me that you let the kids eat ice cream for breakfast.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And you could be really hard on them.”

“I was. I know. I’m sorry. But I was helping them build character. And character is destiny.”

“Mmm.” Judith pauses. Then she says, “Lainie will be happy to see you. She loves you, Irene. She copies everything you do.”

But this I also know.

When the purple Hybrid pulls up, I’m waiting with a plastic jar of rainbow-bright Superblo gumballs that Drew gave me on a discount from Shady Shack. I ready myself for Judith’s mini-sermon about how sugar will rot out Lainie’s teeth, and am all prepared to give my weak rebuttal that Lainie really, really loves Superblos. But Judith doesn’t comment on it.

Upstairs in his room, Evan is trying to build a shortwave radio. When I peek in Lainie’s room, I see that she’s still asleep in bed. The morning sun gilds the room, and I think how delighted Lainie would be with the princess-y way she looks right now, all the gold light on her face and her hair shining on the pillow and no cast or drool in sight. I decide I’ll do a quick sketch of her. Something for her to wake up and see.

I seat myself in her chair by the window and rummage in Lainie’s book bag for her markers and sketch paper, and that’s when my fingers graze it. I know even before I’ve pulled it out that I’ve finally discovered my long-lost blue spiral Heroine Heads notebook.

At first, my heart pounds in horror when I see what Lainie has done to my work. On one page, she’s attempted to make some heads from her own favorite books. Beezus is next to Judy Moody is next to Amber Brown, and Lainie has shamelessly copied everything: my handwriting, the way I label my heroines, the size and spacing of the heads. But I hardly have time for this specific fury, because by the next page Lainie is using the notebook as a general sketch album of portraits of everyone she has ever met in her entire life. I skim past drawings of Judith, Dan, Grandma, Gretchen McCoy, somebody named Caitlyn, somebody else named Mr. Kohler, Annie Waldron, Evan, Zaps—even Poundcake has been majestically commemorated in my book.

Then I flip to the next page and find me. My giant self, alone, takes up all the room. I am huge, with all ten of my fingers and fork-prong eyelashes and a smile like a banana wedged under my nose. Of course it doesn’t look anything like me because Lainie has so little talent for capturing a likeness, but unlike any of Lainie’s other drawings, my name is written in glittery pen across the top of the page, and my head and my name are both captured inside some kind of wobbly balloon. Or is it a heart?

I squint at it, turning it sideways and upside down. Balloon. No, heart. No, I can’t tell.

Lainie has made me the star of my own notebook.

Except that it’s her notebook now, and I’m not even that angry, maybe because this morning I feel so much older than my notebook, as if somewhere along the summer one of my time countdowns got compressed and sped me through a tunnel when I wasn’t looking.

Heroine Hairstyles, what an idea. But I know I can dream another dream, and I’m not going to let myself get too embarrassed about the old one. Maybe, instead of a beauty parlor, I could open a crafts store, or a bookshop, where I’d still paint the floorboards white and serve peppermint tea—and hire someone else to do the accounting. And I still see my future intertwined with lively outdoor dinner parties overlooking the Los Angeles skyline. Some dreams should stay fixed on the horizon.

Meantime, Lainie and I can work on a few portraits together, and maybe some paper dolls, after she wakes up.