I’m cooler not only because of Karissa’s special attention on me last night, but also because Roxanne has dyed my hair pink. We didn’t bleach it or anything. I wanted it to look dirty and vague. I wanted it to look beachy and sort of mine but sort of not. So the pink floats on top of my dark blond like a punk-rock veil, and I can’t stop looking at myself in window reflections as we walk to Washington Square Park.
“Remember when you wanted to be pretty?” Arizona says, wrinkling her nose.
“I thought you were all into changing ourselves,” I say. Her breasts are fully out today. Tank topped and pushed up and making me depressed. We used to sneak into each other’s beds every night and put water balloons under our shirts when we were feeling silly, pretending to be Janie or Natasha.
“It’s not the worst thing in the world,” she says, “to try to be happy.”
I wonder if she hears herself.
I try to share a look with Roxanne, but she stabs her straw into her iced coffee until the tension lifts.
“You both look great,” she says.
“You should have run it by us,” I say to Arizona. “Like I asked you this morning what you thought about pink hair.”
“And I said I thought it would look weird on you,” Arizona says. “Besides, I ran it by Roxanne. So chill.”
Roxanne’s face matches my new hair.
“You told Roxanne?” I say. It’s not like I don’t know that they talk without me. We have group emails and texts and three-way phone calls and video chats, but of course they talk about college crap on their own.
I didn’t know they talked about things that mattered without me there.
The sun is suddenly too bright. It’s funny how I waited all winter for the summer, and now I have a sweaty back and my eyes are watery from the intensity of the light and I’m hating how my legs look in shorts.
“I knew Roxanne wouldn’t judge me,” Arizona says.
“It’s not judgment to, like, question your choices and wonder why you’re going against everything that’s ever mattered to us,” I say.
“I can do something for me and it can have nothing to do with you or Dad or whoever,” Arizona says.
“Not when it’s plastic surgery!” I say too loudly.
When we sit on our favorite benches, Roxanne plays some song on her phone, turning up the volume and singing along. It’s dirty and seems like the kind of song that isn’t popular yet but will be soon.
I distract myself with someone else’s conversation. Two middle-aged women on the bench across from us complaining about their sons’ girlfriends. I want to enter their conversation and leave this one behind.
What I really want is to ask Arizona and Roxanne how often they talk without me and whether they prefer it to talking with me. I want a map of the exact distance apart we’ve grown this year, so I can find my way back.
“It’s off the table,” Arizona says, which is what we always say when we’ve decided something is no longer up for group discussion. Like when Roxanne started hooking up with her TA or when I skipped their graduation last year.
“Let’s talk about the bags under your eyes and the sudden need to have cool hair,” Roxanne says to me.
“Girl was out of control last night,” Arizona says.
“You didn’t invite me?” Roxanne pouts, and I think maybe against all odds our first day back together is going to be a good day in the park. The kind where we laugh and tease and buy ice cream from the truck and feel both five and twenty-five at the same time.
“I was out with Karissa. From acting class,” I say. They’ve both heard me talk about her perfectly wavy hair and the way everyone falls over themselves trying to get her attention. They’ve heard about her jangling bracelets and every color of cowboy boots and neon lacy bras peeking out under all manner of T-shirt and tank top and reconstructed sweatshirt.
“Ah. She tell you to dye your hair?” Roxanne says. I blush. I don’t want that to be the case, and it isn’t exactly, but I’m not a true original like Roxanne. I am trying to be cool, which isn’t the same thing as actually being cool, and I know it.
“Trying to be more like you,” I snark back. I know compared to Roxanne’s spirit and Arizona’s smartness I’m nothing special. But to Karissa I’m something more. Trying to explain it makes me sound even lamer, though.
Arizona sighs and brushes her fingers through her hair. She is practicing different looks. Sexy. Sultry. Kitten-y. Aloof. I want to call her on it, but I think everything Arizona-related is off the table today.
“We were at a bar,” I say. “Dirty Versailles. Lower East Side. Near that hairdresser you go to. Sluts and Posers?”
“Pimps and Pinups,” Roxanne says, laughing like a maniac.
“Exactly.”
It’s so sunny we’re all squinting. The air smells like roasting nuts and dog urine and New York, a not-terrible combination that grows more pungent in the summer.
“You still smell sort of alcoholy, now that you mention it,” Roxanne says.