Callie laughs. “You’re not entering, though, are you?”
I wait for a second. Two. Three. Four. Ellen says nothing.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Obviously, I would never enter that depraved popularity contest. But still. What kind of shithead makes that assumption?
“It seems like you’re not that type of girl. Like, not in a bad way.”
I am suddenly reminded of how small my bathing suit is. The leg holes cut into my hips and the straps dig into my shoulders. Anxiety creeps through me like twisting vines.
“But,” Callie says, “Bekah Cotter is going to be some serious competition. Girl is as all-American as they come.”
The need to escape pulls at my feet.
And, of course, Callie is using my dress as a beach towel so that her precious skin doesn’t touch the hot plastic seat.
I turn to Ellen. “I’m going to run back to your house to use the bathroom.” I slide my feet into my flip-flops and grab the first towel I see before walking off as fast as I can.
“Is something wrong?” I hear Callie ask in the kind of way that says, What’s her problem?
“But they have bathrooms here!” El calls over the crowd.
The towel barely fits around my waist. I don’t care. I keep on walking.
A car of boys passes by me and honks.
“Oh, fuck off!” yells El from behind me.
I turn. In nothing but her swimsuit, she jogs down the sidewalk with my dress and bag in her arms.
“I’ve been trying to catch up to you!” she says.
I open my mouth to speak, but remember that I’m mad at her. I keep walking. We don’t fight. I know that best friends are supposed to fight, but El and I never get into it. Sure, we argue over dumb stuff like TV shows and which Dolly look is the best, but never anything real. Yet I’m so mad that she left me out there to dry with that Callie girl. She said nothing.
Maybe I’m making a bigger deal of this than it is. Maybe it’s the type of thing only I noticed. Like, how when you have a pimple and you think it’s the only thing anyone else sees when they see you.
But then there was the way Callie looked me up and down. Like I was some kind of abomination. The truth is that I’m mad I felt uncomfortable to begin with, because why should I? Why should I feel bad about wanting to get into a pool or standing around in my swimsuit? Why should I feel like I need to run in and out of the water so that no one has to see the atrocity that are my thighs?
“Will! Freaking wait! Jesus Christ.”
Not bothering to stop, I say, “I need to head home.”
“Can you tell me what happened back there? You turned into a total psycho. What was that?”
I stop because I’ve reached El’s house and now that my feet have nowhere else to go, it’s like I can’t stop my mouth from talking. “What was that?” I yell back at her. “That was you leaving me out in the pool by myself. You abandoned me out there. And who the hell was that twiggy bitch?” As soon as it’s out of my mouth I regret it. All my life I’ve had a body worth commenting on and if living in my skin has taught me anything it’s that if it’s not your body, it’s not yours to comment on. Fat. Skinny. Short. Tall. It doesn’t matter.
But El only says, “You looked so relaxed! How does leaving you in the pool by yourself make me a shit friend? You’re sixteen years old and you’re mad at me for leaving you in the pool by yourself?”
I’ve seen El and Tim argue enough times to know that this is her specialty. She simplifies the situation to the point that whoever’s sitting across from her is left feeling foolish. She’s the type of person you want arguing for you. Not against you.
I shake my head at her because I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want to say that I’m mad because I was left without my security blanket: her. Or that she should have stood up for me back there.
“And that ‘twiggy bitch,’” she says, “is my coworker. You don’t have to be her friend, but you could at least be nice to her.”