14
ALI
I’ve been going to the C-wing bathroom with Blythe Jensen for about a week now, which is causing problems between me and Sammi.
Sammi wants to know if I’m going back to the gynecologist. Sammi wants to know if I got the STI test back. (I did. It was negative.) Sammi wants to know if I’m sleeping. If I’m eating. If I want to get disco fries at the diner. If I’ve talked to someone about the thing that happened, because we can’t name the thing that happened. I won’t let her. I won’t let her tell Raj. I won’t let her tell anyone. And I don’t want to answer any of Sammi’s questions because I don’t want to think about that night. I don’t want to think about anything at all.
I walk out of my third period class, and Blythe’s standing there waiting for me like she said she would be. The hallway is chaotic between periods and so many kids and schlumpy teachers bump into each other, and there’s Blythe, this lone spirit, standing right under the MUSTANG PRIDE signs, watching me. Her greenish-blue eyes shimmer as I step closer. I blush. I’ve never had this kind of attention from another girl before. Not like this. Not like Blythe.
She nudges me with her elbow. Wraps her hand around mine.
“Stand against the locker,” she says.
“Huh?”
“You heard me. Stand against the locker—I want to show you your posture. You’re a sloucher, Greenleaf.”
Blythe is Eliza Doolittle–ing me. She’s going to turn me into her little smooth-armed robot. Her little fashion princess. She’s going to dress me up like a doll next and curl my hair. I back up against the metal locker, trying to get my body straight. Blythe pushes my shoulders back.
“Relax,” she says. “Drop your shoulders.”
I do what she says. But I slept funny last night. Every night since the party. I stretch my neck to the left. Then to the right.
“Ugh! What are you doing?”
“I’m loosening up my neck.”
“You’re going to give yourself fucking whiplash, Greenleaf.”
“I don’t think you get whiplash from standing.”
She softens her face, her perfect teeth white and gleaming like she has the answers to everything, and maybe she does. “We’ll work on it. Getting your shoulders down,” she says, and then zeroes in on my triceps. Blythe has a hot-pink reverse French manicure. Her nails are clear and the half-moons are neon. She runs her nails down my arm. It tingles. “Then we’ll work on the pimples on the back of your arms.”
My skin is bumpy. A little freckly, but I don’t have pimples. I don’t think I have pimples. At least I never thought I had pimples until this moment.
“Touch my triceps.” Blythe hooks her elbow toward me and makes a muscle. I laugh, a nervous laugh because it sounds so strange, like she’s showing off. “I’m not going to bite, Greenleaf.”
So I touch her skin. And it’s so smooth. So shiny. So much softer than mine. I’m in a trance from her arms. And I stare back at mine. How did my arms get so ragged? How did mine become so neglected?
“See how smooth I am, Ali? See how shiny my skin is?”
I touch her because she asks me to, and I want to, just to be closer to her because Blythe’s skin glows like every other part of her. None of it seems real, except it all is.
“How do you get your elbows so pale? And how do you get all those bumps off?”
“You have to exfoliate. You gotta dry loofa that shit out. Then alcohol. Then almond oil.”
“Wait, doesn’t alcohol burn?”
“Of course it burns. What are you, a pussy?”
“Hell no.”
“Do you ever go to yoga, Greenleaf?”
“Not really.”
“You should take a class with me one night. It’s really good for your posture, and your mind too.”
“I know what yoga is, Blythe. I don’t live under a rock.”
Blythe’s face gets crumply and weird. She’s not used to someone being irritated with her, or snarky. They’re all yes girls. And I’m supposed to be a yes girl too. A fangirl. She doesn’t know that I’ve watched her for years. I’m not alone. Who hasn’t watched Blythe Jensen? How do you not stare?
“The only time I stopped doing yoga was when I hurt my ankle. And I had to walk around on a cane for a little while—”
“I remember that,” I say, but it’s too quick. I shouldn’t remember that. I shouldn’t have been so quick to admit that I noticed her cane. An old brown carved cane. She walked around with it for at least a month.
“You remember that?”
“I mean, it was a pretty unusual cane.” Trying to shrug it off.
“My dad got me that cane in Africa.”
“He travels a lot? Your dad?”
“Yeah—he’s away a lot. I’m, like, the house babysitter,” she snorts.
“Oh, do you have a younger sister or brother?”
She looks away. I want to ask her where she’s looking, but maybe I already know. It’s the anywhere-but-here look.
“My mother is sick. She has an illness. I shouldn’t say babysitter. I’m just needed around my house.”
“What kind of illness?”
“She’s fucking crazy,” Blythe says. “No. I shouldn’t say that either. That’s mean. She’s bipolar.” She slows her walk down to a stroll. Everyone else is speeding up, but we’re slowing down. She’s told me something now that she can’t take back. I’m supposed to give up something private and secretive about myself in return.
“Well, my mother’s fucking crazy too,” I say.
“Everyone’s mother is crazy,” she says. “But unless you have a crazy mother, a real honest-to-goodness, clinically crazy parent, you just don’t understand what that’s like.”
And so now we’re at a standstill, kind of. And I wish I had a joke. Anything to break that silence.
“You want to have a crazy-off with me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” I say and smile. I drop my hands down like I’m about to fight her. Rock my body back and forth. Hop up and down. “Let’s have a crazy-mom-off. Let’s do it.”
She stops. So I stop too. And everyone walking behind us trips over themselves because when Blythe stops walking, everyone stops walking.
“Greenleaf.”
“I’m serious.”