“Hey, Divider!” She smiles a big, toothy smile at me. “How excited are you for the dance!”
“Not going,” I mutter, shuffling backward to let her in.
“Why? Too lame for you?”
“I’ve got plans later!” I sardonically try to match her bright tone.
“Whatcha doing?”
“I’m being executed by the state!”
Ashley seems not to hear me as she glows around my apartment, idly picking things up, seeming to judge how much they cost, and putting them back down in ways that very clearly show how much she thinks they cost.
“It’s cute here.” She can’t resist a passive-aggressive dig, adding, “Cozy.”
“Ashley,” shrieks Avery. “Help much?”
“Right. Yeah, totally. Okay, well. Oh—is that my dress?” Ashley stares at the navy dress Avery’s wearing. Avery shrugs and tugs at its scalloped lace hem.
“Is that cool?”
“Of course. It looks hot on you! Very Kate Middy. Because, I mean”—she laughs, so lilting that you can almost picture the musical notes they’d use in closed-captioning—“I’m pretty obviously Pippa. Anyways, let’s do this thing.”
Ashley dumps the entire contents of her makeup bag onto the floor, and Avery slides off the sofa. They’re both huddled on the carpet over the makeup like it’s a fire keeping them warm. Ashley murmurs something to herself, then selects an eyeliner and leans in toward Ave until their identical strawberry blond heads are nearly touching. I feel a pang and wish, like I sometimes do, that Matilda and I were closer in age.
“Hey, Scarlett, have you got any nail polish remover?” Ashley waits a beat, then frowns a little and repeats, “Scarlett?”
I snap to attention, at this point totally used to her addressing me as Divider.
“Yeah, um, yeah, I’ll get it.”
As I head down the hall to Dawn’s room, the familiar iPhone text alert chimes from the living room. I nearly reach for my own phone anyway, a Pavlovian response.
“Oh God, he’s texting me!” Avery yells from the other room.
“What did he say?” I yell back.
There’s a pause as ostensibly she opens the text.
“Sup!” she shrieks, like the final girl in a horror movie.
Ashley works quickly. In twenty minutes, Avery has gone from ferret to fetching (which I’d watch the shit out of on Bravo). The makeup is flawless. The dress is classy but sexy. Her hair is simple but cute, just a few bobby pins drawing her bangs off her face. Mission accomplished.
“You look amazing,” I assure her.
“Really?”
“Yes, totally.”
“Thanks. Thank you. Sorry for . . .” She jerks her head, cockeyed, toward Ashley, who is checking her phone.
“Please, this is what I’m here for.”
“Babe, we gotta go,” Ashley interjects, a little more frozen over than she’d been just a second ago.
Avery nods stiffly, still looking incredibly nervous, picks up the little clutch she’s chosen for the night, and heads for the door.
“Bye.”
“See you, Divider,” Ashley says flippantly as she waltzes out the front door. We had a good run with my God-given name for a minute there.
“Bye, have fun!”
Avery takes one step out the door, then she runs back and grabs my arm.
“You have to come with me.”
“Ew. What? No.”
“What if it’s bad? Like, what if we have nothing to talk about, or dancing is awkward, or he tries to have sex with me?”
“Is he gonna?” I ask, startled.
“I have no idea! That’s the point!”
Ashley dips backward through the doorway, grabbing the frame for support, and chirps, “You tell him I said you can’t.”
“But maybe I want to!”
Ashley gets an odd look on her face and says, “I had sex for the first time after a school dance when I ‘maybe’ wanted to, and it was awful.”
Ave and I both look at her, taken aback. She shrugs, sort of sadly. The moment ends when Avery’s phone chimes.
“Oh, it’s him again.”
She opens the text and reads it: “Where letter-R letter-U.”
I roll my eyes. “Right out of Jane Austen.”
“Please come, Scar. I’ll owe you. I’ll watch a whole season of Lycanthrope with you. I’ll do your take-home math tests.”
“You already do that.”
She stops pleading and looks a little indignant. “Yeah. I do. So actually, you owe me.”
I think of what Loup said about writing myself brave. Its accuracy is irritating. By staying inside and fantasizing instead of actually going out and doing something normal teenagers do, I accidentally Mary Sue’d myself to the first degree in front of my friends, writers that I respect. It’s so humiliating. And it stops now.
“Okay,” I say.
“Really?!” she squeals, jumping up and down.
“Yes.”
Avery scoops up the makeup bag and tosses it to Ashley, who semi-begrudgingly catches it and comes back inside, shutting the door behind her.
“Your turn!”
Chapter 15