The Best of Enemies (15 page)

We pull into the garage behind Terry and Teddy’s amazing Arts and Crafts home with the original millwork and stained glass.
As we exit the garage, stretching and breathing in the warm night air of the backyard, Terry says, “I can’t speak for you, Jack, but I want to bake this Kitty lady something extra nice.
I feel like I owe her a debt of gratitude.
Can I send her a treat?
What kind of pie says ‘thanks for being too much woman for my man?’
Key lime?
Rhubarb?”

“Cherry?”
Ted suggests, snickering.

“Stop it, you.
Really, I’d like to make her something,” Terry insists.
“Would that be okay?”

“Only if you add broccoli,” I reply, only half kidding.

“Consider it done.”

The guys are all smiles and jocularity as we bring my gear into the house, but I’m more solemn, worrying about what comes next.
I offer up a short prayer that, no matter how tomorrow shakes out, I won’t throw the broccoli pie at Kitty.

Because Sars always deserved better.

Whitney University, Central Illinois

October 1994

“How hot are
you
?
You’re totally smoking.
For real.”

As of this moment, Jackie’s a serious ten.
Not kidding.
Who saw this coming?
Definitely not Jackie, as she’s still gawping at herself in the mirror, completely gob smacked.
Like, her mouth’s literally been hanging open ever since I did the big reveal five minutes ago.
Granted, I have mad makeover skills, but wasn’t aware she had that kind of raw material under all those ill-fitting hockey shirts and sweatpants.

I arranged a signature daytime look that makes the most of Jackie’s natural attributes.
After applying black liquid liner cat-eye style with a neutral matte powder shadow, I brushed on layer after layer of Great Lash to make the crazy-kaleidoscope iris colors pop.
(I skipped the base because her skin is, as we say in French,
da bomb
.) I finished her off with the same awesome brownish-bronze shade on her lips that Shannen Doherty’s been sporting lately.

I back-combed Jackie’s long hair for volume and to show off how piece-y her cut is.
Stefan says these layers are the new take on the seventies shag and this style’s about to become The Next Big Thing.
I also lent her a fab knee-length plaid swing dress (picture a modern Mary Quant), fat-heeled Mary Janes, and my favorite velvet choker.

“You look just like Phoebe Cates,” I say.

She knits her brows.
“Have I met her?
You’ve introduced me to so many girls already that I can’t remember who’s who.”

What Jackie doesn’t know about pop culture could fill a book.
Mean it.
Last week, she asked me if
Courteney Cox
lived in our dorm, because she kept hearing that name.
“Phoebe Cates is the actress who took off her bikini top in
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
.”

Jackie seems puzzled.
“That’s good?”

“Very good,” I confirm.

She returns her attention to her reflection.
“You’re a miracle worker,” she says, practically pressing her face into the mirror for a closer look.

I wave her off.
“Please.
I’m not Jesus making loaves out of fishes.
I’m more like . . .
Mary Kay,” I reply.
“Fact is it’s a lot easier to sculpt marble than, say, oatmeal.
Your skin, for example?
Your pores literally make me rage-y.”

Jackie flushes and touches her cheek.
Her modesty is super-refreshing.
Whenever anyone tells my sister Kelly she’s pretty, she’s all,
“Yeah, and?”
because she’s heard it a million times.

Jackie stammers, “My—my skin’s nothing special.”

I sit down to refresh my own makeup because I need considerably more foundation work than she does.
I’m so fair that if I skip mascara or eye/brow liner, I look like a newborn baby rat.

I rest my elbows on my desk where the lighted makeup mirror’s arranged on my textbooks.
As I paint my inner lids with blue kohl, I ask, “Are you kidding?
I’ve never seen you with a single blackhead, let alone a full-on, stressed-out, pre-period Vesuvius, despite washing your face with hand soap.
Hand soap.
I don’t even want to mention your visible abs.
I didn’t know
girls
could have those.
Fortunately, I’m not a jealous person, because I’d probably be consumed by the little green monster right now.
No lie.
Do me a proper and don’t let my boyfriend see you all dolled up.
I couldn’t compete!”

Seriously, Sean’s super chummy with Jackie.
He thinks she’s hilarious.

Jackie does this all over body-roll, like she’s trying to shimmy away from the compliment.
Instead of just accepting her accolades, she goes, “What’s wrong with hand soap?
Skin is skin.”
Then she flops down on the futon next to the mirror, legs akimbo, as though she’s sitting in the dugout, waiting for her turn at bat.

“Knees, please.”
I have to keep reminding Jackie she’s wearing a dress.
I swear sometimes that wolves raised her, but at least she’s open to learning.
She quickly crosses her legs in a decidedly more ladylike manner, just like we’ve practiced.
“
‘Skin is skin’?
You’re messing with me, right?”
I peer back at her from the reflection in my mirror.

“Maybe not wearing makeup has been good for my face.”
She pokes at her eyelid with a newly manicured finger.
“Hey, this stuff will come off later, right?
It’s not permanent?”

This girl is just too precious for words sometimes.
We’ve started reading
Brave New World
in my Freshman Lit class and I feel like I’m Bernard Marx (the hero, obviously) bringing John the Savage into Utopia.
She doesn’t understand our modern ways either, but she will and everything will work out great eventually.
(Haven’t finished the book yet, but I’m sure there’s a happy ending.) So I tell her, “Honey, it’s
eyeliner
, not a tattoo.
You can wash it all off in about fifteen seconds.
Later, though.
Not now.
And not with hand soap.”

Jackie’s makeover is like those infomercials where they find some ratty old hunk of metal in a scrap yard.
Looks all beat up and worthless, right?
But then they dip the piece in a special chemical bath and presto-change-o, all the scum dissolves and a valuable object’s revealed!

Jackie’s totally a shiny silver doubloon now, which is amazing because when we moved into our room together two months ago, she was a bit of a sartorial train wreck.
When I saw that her makeup bag was basically a tube of lip balm, I was nervous.
When she put up the
Top Gun
poster, I was all,
“What’s up with
that
?”
And when she pulled out of her bag
seven different kinds of sneakers
?
Yikes.
But I gave her a chance and I’m so glad I did.
She’s now my best, best friend and I would, like, take a bullet for her.
Mean it.

I always had close girlfriends, but I was never as tight with them as I am with Jackie.
For example, I appreciate how smart Jackie is, despite buying the wrong comforter because she couldn’t tell the difference between the poppy and the tulip-printed Marimekko bedding.
(Actually, no biggie—the mixed florals look faboo together.) Plus, she’s a great listener and seems so open to new experiences.
Her default answer is, “Sure!
Let’s do it!”
I can’t believe she can fly a plane by herself—how, like,
brave
is that?
I’m still so nervous about driving that I have to take the back roads all the way home to North Shore, instead of using the expressway.
We’re totally the Odd Couple, but in a way where our respective strengths, like,
compensate
for each other.

Sean’s right, Jackie is really funny, even though her quips go over my head sometimes.
She kept giggling over how I was “farding” when putting on her makeup.
(I still don’t get it and I
did not
eat beans.)

The biggest bonus of being roomies and best friends is that her brothers are TCFW—Too Cute For Words.
(Not the crabby one, though.) The guys took off their shirts while they were building our loft and . . .
rowr!
They kept saying,
“It’s so hot in here.”
Later, my sister, Kelly, and I were all,
“I’ll say it was hot!”

Teddy’s especially nice-looking.
If I wasn’t dating Sean, I’d have been ignoring Teddy extrahard, alongside of Kelly.
(Kelly says the fastest way into a guy’s heart is to be dismissive of him.) Jackie believes I’d get along better with Bobby, who’s supernice, albeit kind of a stoner.
I dug his laid-back vibe, but he’s all the way in California for school, while Teddy could drive down here from the city in less than two hours.

Again, doesn’t matter because I do not cheat on boyfriends.
Ever.
Sean and I have been together since the first week of summer camp this year.
He was a counselor on the boys’ side up in ’Sconsin.
I thought he looked way cute in his puka shell necklace and tank top, so I tacitly ignored him, per Kelly’s instructions.
Works every time!
He finally sidled up to me at the campfire and we started talking.
I was psyched to hear he was starting his junior year at Whitney, and when he mentioned he was not only in the best fraternity but also premed with hopes of becoming a plastic surgeon, I knew he was the one for me.
All summer long we’d sneak away from our cabins to make out in the boathouse.
(We never went below the belt.
Kelly says pretty girls don’t need to put out, although a little bit of me might wish she was wrong.)

Anyway, I’ve been excited to go Greek ever since I started hearing my mom’s stories about dances and hayrides and all-night gossip fests.
Once Kelly pledged and lent me her awesome letter sweatshirts, I was even more sure I wanted to belong.
Plus, a lot of her friends are still here on campus, so I have a built-in social circle already.
Unless I rob a bank or wear sweatpants to class or something, I’m guaranteed a Tri Tau bid.
I’m still planning to attend parties at each campus sorority, though.
Let them fight over me, right?

I’m superexcited to go through rush, which starts today.
That’s why I insisted Jackie finally let me style her.
Thing is, rush is a delicate dance of looking your best while saying the right thing without bragging, of highlighting academic success without sounding like a mega-dork (
ahem
, Sars), and of showing them you’re entertaining and freewheeling, but not so entertaining or freewheeling that you’re going to flash your ta-tas at the SAE house and ruin your chapter’s rep.

“Are the rush parties fun?”
I asked my mum and Kelly back in August when they were helping move me into my fab new dorm room.
I still can’t get over our great fortune—Jackie and I randomly were assigned one of the gorgeous fourth floor rooms with the beams on the ceiling and the stained glass windows.
We totally scored on the half bath, too.
How nice is it to share a sink with one person, as opposed to fifty?

Best part of our little piece of Wadsworth Hall is we have a
fireplace
!
The University would have kittens if we tried to burn anything in the hearth, so on Parents’ Weekend, Mum bought us a big ol’ fern to fill that space instead.
With our color—if not pattern—coordinated comforters, lofted beds,
and
a futon, we totally have the best room on campus.