“Was he, like, hitting on you?”
“What? No,” I said, stung. “I mean—I don’t think so?” I frowned. Had Tulsa been hitting on me and I just hadn’t realized? I thought of what Kristin had said back at the beginning: I figured you must be super hot.
“Listen.” Olivia grinned at me then, nudged me in the ribs. “If there’s any room at that villa . . .”
“Of course,” I promised, smiling back at her. “I’ll get you a set of keys.”
The four of us crowded onto the sofa when we got home that night, eating corn chips from the vending machine and watching one Fresh Prince rerun after another. The faint smell of chlorine hung in the air. “Can I play with your hair?” Kristin asked Ashley, reaching over and tugging on the ends of it to get her attention.
Ashley rolled her eyes like somebody who got asked this question a lot. “Why?” she asked. “Because—”
“Here,” Olivia intervened, sliding off the couch and settling on the carpet in front of Kristin. “Play with mine instead.” Then, peering up at her with a crooked smile, “I’m really sorry Tulsa didn’t get the chance to appreciate your wax job.”
“His loss,” Kristin and I said at exactly the same time, and Kristin grinned.
We hung out for a while longer, Kristin twisting Olivia’s hair into a complicated-looking braid crown, then turning and offering to do mine. “Sure,” I said, surprised and kind of flattered. “That’d be nice.”
“Let’s make cookies,” Ashley said when Kristin was finished, tucking the last of the bobby pins into place.
“I don’t think there’s anything in this whole apartment to make cookies with,” I pointed out. “There’s, like, protein powder and filtered water and that’s it.”
“We’ll improvise,” Ash decided, which is how we wound up making the world’s most disgusting cookies with flour, Equal, Egg Beaters, and two packs of vending-machine M&M’s. We listened to a TLC CD on Charla’s boom box while they baked, making up a stupid dance to go along with it.
“Until, like, last year I thought this song was about a guy named Jason Waterfalls,” I admitted, and Ashley laughed so hard she started wheezing and Olivia had to run into the bedroom and grab her inhaler. When Charla opened her bedroom door, I thought she was going to yell at us to pipe down and go to bed, but after watching us for a minute, she stretched her arms a little, like she was warming up. “Can I get in on this?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“You wanna learn this dance?” I asked.
Charla nodded. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, a slow grin spreading over my face. The timer on the oven dinged: the cookies were finished. “Of course.”
It was fun as hell, being in charge of Charla for a change, turning the tables as she gamely let us boss her through the steps we’d already come up with. “Sharp movements!” I called out in a singsong voice, hands on my hips. “Remember to smile!”
That stopped her, the dark arches of her eyebrows going up. “I’m sorry,” she said, lips pursed. “Are you impersonating me right now?”
Ashley snorted; Olivia looked innocently away. “. . . No?” I said, but Charla only laughed.
“Show me the turn one more time,” she said, and I did.
It was after two in the morning by the time we called it a night, still giggling. I’d had fun today, I realized—not just with Olivia, but with everyone, Kristin and Ashley included. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be all along. I rinsed out the mixing bowl we’d used for the cookies, changed into my pajamas. I pushed open the bathroom door, and gasped—there was Olivia on the floor in front of the toilet, one hand holding her hair back as she puked.
“Shit,” I said, taking a step back. “Sorry. Are you sick?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine,” she told me, wiping her mouth.
I blinked, my sleepy brain slow to put things together. Then it clicked. “Oh, Olivia, no.”
“It’s nothing,” she said immediately, sitting back against the wall next to the toilet paper holder. Her eyes were watery and bloodshot, her face flushed. “I’m not—stop, it’s not a big deal.”
“Liv.” I felt my eyes fill with tears—I couldn’t help it. She’d never done this before, that I knew about; I wondered what else I didn’t know. I swallowed, pulled myself together. “Come on.”
Olivia shook her head again. She looked more like herself now—or rather, she looked like Showbiz Olivia, putting up that cool facade. “It’s really fine. It’s just a one-time thing. I seriously think it’s just nerves or something.”
I studied her, skeptical. There had been signs she was struggling, I admitted to myself now. The way she’d been picking at her food since we got here. The way her cheekbones had begun to jut. I’d told myself she was just stressed. I’d told myself we all had a lot of adjusting to do. “Are you sure it’s just one time?” I asked. “Like, I didn’t think it worked like that.”
“Well, I work like that,” she said briskly. Then she softened. “Dana, I’m fine. I promise you this isn’t anything to freak out about. And I’d really appreciate you not telling anybody, okay?”
Really appreciate? That was a Showbiz Olivia turn of phrase if ever I’d heard one. I hesitated. I wasn’t exactly sure how to play this—I didn’t want to scare her, or make her feel attacked or like I was going to rat on her. But I also wanted to make sure she was okay. It felt like I should be doing more than just making sure Olivia ate her dinner. Like maybe our arrangement wasn’t working after all. “Okay,” I said finally. “But Liv—”
“You know what I was thinking about at Guy’s today?” Olivia asked me then, leaning her head back against the green-tiled wall. “Mel Dunbar’s birthday party.”