“Creepy, huh?” Casey said, taking another long drag off her cigarette and fanning the smoke outside. “Mom says she bets modeling made Gwendolyn crazy. It’s a horrible industry, you know.”
“So you said.” I thought of the Lakeview Models in their pumps and matching T-shirts, posing in front of giant fake leaves. And Gwendolyn, the town’s pride and joy, walking mad in the streets.
“It’ll be all over the papers, and People magazine, soon,” she went on, waving her hand in front of her face to fan off the smoke. “You know, it’s big news when someone like Gwendolyn goes nuts.”
“It’s so sad,” I said again. If even supermodel and beautiful hometown girl Gwendolyn Rogers could crash and burn, what would become of me ... or anyone? She’d been profiled in one of Casey’s Teen World magazines just a few months before, sharing her Biggest Secrets: her favorite food (pizza), band (R.E.M.), and beauty secret (cucumbers on her eyes to reduce puffiness after long days of shooting). And we knew these things about her, just as we did about Cindy and Elle and Claudia, girls who didn’t even need last names. Girls that could have been our friends by the details we memorized about them, or the girl next door. As Gwendolyn, supermodel and Lakeview girl, tall like me, had once been.
“Casey?” There was a sudden knock on the door and Mrs. Melvin’s thick New York accent, which always made her sound irritated even when she wasn’t, boomed through the wall. “It’s time for dinner and it’s your turn to set the table. Haven can stay if she wants to.”
“Just a minute,” Casey yelled, tossing the cigarette out the window, where it rolled down to the gutter and caught a wad of pine needles on fire. Casey, busy running around the room spraying White Shoulders on everything, didn’t notice.
“Casey,” I whispered, pointing out the window at the small blaze. “Look.”
“Not now,” she snapped in a low voice, still waving her arms. “God, Haven, help me.”
“Wait,” I whispered, getting up and going to the window. “Don’t open the door yet.”
“Can you smell it?” she said, whirling around. “Can you?”
“No, but—”
Mrs. Melvin knocked again, harder. “Casey, open the door.”
“Okay, okay, one second.” She put the perfume on the dresser and went to the door, passing the window without noticing the flame burning in the gutter. She unlocked the door. “God, come on in then.”
As Mrs. Melvin came in I was leaning against the windowsill, attempting to appear casual with my Coke in my hand and trying not to cough as a thick cloud of White Shoulders settled over me. She took one step, stopping in the frame to take two short sniffs of the air. She was a small woman, like Casey, with the same shock of red hair, only hers was styled in a bob, ends curling down neatly over her shoulders. She wore stirrup pants and a long white shirt, with huge gold hoops dangling from her ears. Her eyeliner, as always, drew my attention next: onyx black, thick on upper and lower lids, curving out past her eye to a neat flourish that made her look like a cat. It must have taken half a jar of cold cream to remove and was a bit much, especially in our neighborhood, but it was her trademark. That and her incredible sense of smell.
She sniffed again, with her eyes closed, then opened them and said curtly, “You’ve been smoking.”
Casey turned bright red. “I have not.”
I glanced out the window. The fire was still burning, looking like it might spread to a wad of leaves nearby. I had to do something, so as Mrs. Melvin crossed the room, eyes closed again and still sniffing, I panicked and flung the rest of my Coke out the window, most of it hitting the glass with a splat but thankfully enough getting to the edge of the roof where it somehow, miraculously, doused the fire. I thought we were home free until I turned around to see Mrs. Melvin, hands on her hips, looking at me. Just past her was Casey, who threw her hands up in the air and shook her head, surrendering.
“Yes you have,” she said, walking past me to the open window and glancing out at the smoldering gutter. “Look at that. You’re setting fires and still lying to my face.”
“Mom,” Casey said quickly, “I didn’t ...”
Mrs. Melvin walked to the door. “Jake, get up here.” Parenting in the Melvin household was a tag-team affair. Any conflict had to be dealt with in tandem, attacked from both sides. I heard Mr. Melvin pounding up the steps before he appeared in the doorway in jeans and loafers. My father called Mr. Melvin the consummate frat boy. He was forty-three but looked eighteen and was about as whipped as any man could be. One look, one call from Mrs. Melvin and he snapped to attention.
“What’s going on?” He had a newspaper in his hand. “Hello, Haven. How’s it going?”
“Good,” I said.
“We have a situation here,” Mrs. Melvin said, directing his attention out the window to the gutter, which was still smoking a bit and thus providing the proper dramatic effect. “Your daughter has taken up smoking.”