Bex stops and stares at me with a mix of horror and bewilderment. “They’ll notice us! There will be cameras everywhere, and I guarantee you we will both be on some website like Hot Girls of Fish City dot-com. Unless you try to pull the little-matchstick-girl look again, which I am here to prevent.”
I lumber to the window and cringe at what I see below. News trucks are parked up and down my street, each with a massive satellite dish mounted on its roof. Reporters spring from them like jack-in-the-boxes and charge across the road with camera operators in tow. They claim their inch of the sidewalk and prep for their “live at the scene” reports. There are a few news choppers buzzing around in the sky too. The whole world is looking into our fishbowl today.
Bex abandons my dresser and moves on to my closet, where an enormous overstuffed backpack blocks the door. It’s the kind you take for climbing mountains, and it’s packed tight. When she tries to shove it aside, it topples over, nearly taking her with it.
“Will you do something with this, already? It’s always in the way. What the hell is in it?”
“Just some stuff I’m going to donate to Goodwill,” I lie.
“Hey! I get first dibs on everything,” she says with mock offense. She goes to work on the zipper before I pull it away.
“It’s just socks and underwear.”
“You’re donating used socks and underwear to the poor?”
With all the bull I shovel every single day, I should be getting pretty good at it, but I’m a total amateur when I have to lie to Bex. I wish I could tell her the truth about everything, like what is in the backpack, at the very bottom, loaded and ready, just in case. It would be nice to tell someone—I would feel a lot less lonely—but the truths I keep from her, and everyone else, are just too burdensome to share. They’re the kind that stand on your neck and won’t let you up.
“That’s gross, Lyric,” she says, then shoos the backpack away like it . . . well, like it’s really full of used socks and undies. The closet doors fly open, followed by a symphony of squeals. Inside are thrift-store treasures: artfully ripped jeans, vintage band T-shirts, authentic 1950s housedresses, day-glo bangles, cocktail dresses, big clunky shoes (both awkward and terrible for walking), and dozens of peculiar hats stored in hatboxes. I’ve been collecting it all since I was ten, digging through bins at the Salvation Army and stalking eBay. I had big plans for these clothes, but now my closet is a museum dedicated to a life interrupted. I can’t wear any of it, not if I want to fade into the background of this town. Not that I want to, but it’s safer that way.
Bex, however, refuses to give up on me.
“What says, Look at me?” she cries as she sorts through the rack, dragging things out, eyeballing them, then tossing aside what does not meet her approval. “Oh, yes, this is the one.”
She’s found it. Buried far in the back, as far as I could hide it, is a vintage champagne-colored flapper dress. She holds it up against my body and gasps. It’s beaded and hangs about midthigh on me, shimmering like heat on asphalt. I discovered it buried inside an old chest at an estate sale in Gravesend and guessed it was from the 1920s and probably one of a kind. The owner’s son let me haggle him down to ten dollars just before the vintage-shop vultures swooped through the doors. One of them chased me—literally chased me—down the sidewalk and offered me three hundred bucks for it, but I couldn’t give it up. I was in love. I carried it home like I would a newborn baby, hand washed it, repaired a few loose stitches, and fantasized about the day my body would fit into it. I was going to wear it to school and watch boys fall downstairs when I walked by. I was going to cause a panic in that dress.
“This is so inappropriate.” Bex giggles and shoves it into my hands. “It’s perfect.”
A little bit of my heart breaks when I swap it for a pair of black jeans and a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt instead.
“TV! Internet!” Bex shouts, and yanks the clothes away. “This outfit will give birth to a billion mean comments. You’ll become a meme like that bitchy cat. Don’t shake your head at me. I’m serious. When it happens, I will pretend I don’t know you. I’ll be a crappy friend, but I’ll do it. I swear.”
I reach for my clothes and she reluctantly hands them back. Her frown shouts, I miss the old Lyric!
I miss her too. I miss the glitter princess and the Sailor Moon wannabe from four years ago. I miss the days when I strutted along the catwalk known as Coney Island, all hair and dangly earrings and clogs like I was fifty feet tall. Now I have to be small. I have to be a mouse. Squeak. Squeak.
There’s a heavy knock on the door, and then it slowly opens. My father peeks in, if a six-foot-six-inch cop can peek in anywhere. He’s a mountain, hands like catcher’s mitts, and shoulders as broad as the Brooklyn Bridge. He’s in his police uniform, black shirt and shorts, sunglasses, and his Easter Island head—always watching, always unamused.