I took a photo of Alex while she wasn’t paying attention and sent it to him.
Dad: Tell her hi back. And make sure you take it easy this weekend, okay? Be safe
He’d become even more attentive since I’d told him about my cancer diagnosis, offering to come to chemo appointments with me. I said no, of course, explaining Mrs. Stone would be crushed if she couldn’t take me. The few times Dad and I had gotten together since then, at his house or at Tina’s Café near me, he’d been surprised by how healthy I looked. I pointed out not everyone loses their hair during chemo. I was nauseated and fatigued, I told him, and had no appetite. To prove it, I had two measly bites of a breadstick when I met all the Gillespies for dinner at an Olive Garden one Sunday. They’d watched me with pity, but still no one mentioned the camping trip. When I brought it up over dessert, Dad patted my back. He said being that far from medical care wasn’t a good idea.
Didn’t see that coming.
Still, I insisted I’d be done with chemo well before the trip. I told them my doctor said I’d be fine to travel this summer. Now, as a show of good health, I’d come to stay with Alex. If I could already handle a weekend with friends, Dad and Kim would have to let me go with them six months from now. Road trip games, stargazing, Dad putting his arm around me by the campfire—this vacation would be the best two weeks of my life.
“I’m sick of Kirkwood,” Whitney was saying.
“I want to see Tyler,” Alex pouted.
“Who’s Tyler?” I asked.
Alex jerked her head in surprise, as though she’d forgotten I was there. She probably had.
“The guy I’m seeing,” Alex said, swinging that long blond ponytail off her shoulder. She turned to Whitney. “We’re going to Kirkwood. You owe me one.”
Whitney didn’t argue. Based on my observations of her and Alex’s friendship, she was constantly repaying Alex for invisible good deeds.
Whitney sighed and started clearing away the Chinese food. “Fine. Then I’m borrowing your new leather jacket.”
I followed Alex to her bedroom. She began applying makeup in the dresser mirror. I sat cross-legged on her bed. “What kind of bar is Kirkwood?” I asked.
“Sports bar.”
“So I shouldn’t get dressed up?”
“We always get dressed up. But you don’t have to.” She paused, lipstick tube in hand, to study me. Then she went back to her makeup.
“How do you choose a lipstick shade?”
“Depends on your skin tone,” Alex said. “Cool tones make your teeth look whiter.”
I made a note to research “cool tones” later. The right lipstick would make my future teeth look even better.
“You have a fake ID?” Alex asked.
She could be so thick. Yes, Alex, I had my first drink a year ago with you, haven’t had one since, and spend all my time selling video games to teenage boys. I totally have a fake ID.
“No,” I said.
“Ohhh,” Alex said. She sounded like the Wheel of Fortune audience when a contestant missed a no-brainer puzzle. “Kirkwood is twenty-one and up.”
I stared at her. “Do you have a fake ID?”
She bit her lip. “When I turned twenty-one, I sold it to a girl at work who looks like me.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“What do you mean ‘we’? You’ve been here before. You know Chicago bars are twenty-one plus.”
“Can’t Tyler meet us somewhere else?”
Alex gawked at me as if I’d suggested Tyler waltz in front of a snowplow. “I didn’t ask you to come this weekend. You invited yourself.”
My mouth hung open.
Whitney sashayed into the room. “Carmen is going to Kirkwood too,” she announced. She stopped when she saw my expression. “What’s with Sally Sadface over here?”
Without a trace of remorse, Alex said, “Rose Gold isn’t twenty-one. She’s not coming.”
She finished her lipstick and then turned back to me. “But my DVR is full, so you can watch anything you want. There’s a makeover show that might be of interest.”
Whitney tittered. I flushed.
Alex continued. “We’ll have a girls’ day tomorrow. How about that?” I hated her patronizing tone, hated every rotten thing about her.
“We have those face masks,” Whitney said.
“I’ve been wanting to tint and wax my eyebrows for weeks,” Alex added. She glanced at my forehead. “We can wax yours too.”
The two girls eyed each other, making tiny adjustments to their hair, tops, and lips before scurrying out the door. They laughed and yelled until I couldn’t hear them anymore. They had ditched me in minutes.
I wanted to stab something sharp and poisonous through Alex’s face, but she wasn’t here. Instead I found a pair of scissors and got ready to cut the head off Bobo, her childhood teddy bear. I’d pull Bobo’s eyes from his face, leave the two buttons on her dresser, and throw the bear in a dumpster down the street. I watched the scene play out before my eyes, but in the end, I had to leave him be. I’d known Bobo as long as I’d known Alex, and it wasn’t his fault she was a terrible person.
Afterward, I was tired from all the screaming, so I lay on the couch, turned on the TV, and flipped through the channels until I found 10 Things I Hate About You. I’d moved on lately to all the nineties teen movies I’d missed, and while I usually loved this one, I couldn’t stop fuming over Alex. Three hours I’d driven to see her. She deserved to lose more than a beloved toy.
I walked back to Alex’s room and dug through the bag of makeup she’d been ransacking an hour ago. The shade of lipstick she’d used was called Raspberry Kisses. I puckered my lips and applied the color the way I’d watched Alex do. In the mirror, a healthier, prettier version of me gazed back. I put the lipstick in my pocket.
I jammed the bottles and pencils back in her makeup bag. When was someone going to teach Alex she couldn’t treat people like crap and get away with it? All her life, she’d done whatever she wanted, and because she was pretty and charming, nobody ever told her off.
I opened and closed the bathroom medicine cabinet. Nothing of interest. Under the sink, I found hair accessories, cold medicine, shaving cream, a box of tampons, and a bottle of depilatory cream. Unfamiliar with the word, I turned the bottle around and read the back label.
A quick and pain-free way to say goodbye to unwanted hair.