Beautiful

(ONE)

I don’t see her coming.

I am looking at my piece of pizza. I am watching pepperoni glisten. It is my third day at the new school and I am sitting at a table next to the bathrooms. I am eating lunch with the blond girls with the pink sweaters, the girls who talk incessantly about Harvard even though we’re only in seventh grade. They are the kind of girls who have always ignored me. But these girls are different than the ones on the island. They think I am one of them.

She grabs my shoulder from behind and I jump. I turn around. She says, What’s your name?

I tell her, Cassie.

She says, Alex.

She is wearing an army jacket, a short jean skirt, fishnet stockings, and combat boots. Her hair is shoulder length, frizzy and green. She’s tall and skinny, not skinny like a model but skinny like a boy. Her blue eyes are so pale they don’t look human and her eyelashes and eyebrows are so blond they’re almost white. She is not pretty, not even close to pretty. But there’s something about her that’s bigger than pretty, something bigger than smart girls going to Harvard.

It’s only my third day, but I knew the second I got here that this place was different. It is not like the island, not a place ruled by good girls. I saw Alex. I saw the ninth grade boys she hangs out with, their multicolored hair, their postures of indifference, their clothes that tell everybody they’re too cool to care. I heard her loud voice drowning everything out. I saw how other girls let her cut in front of them in line. I saw everyone else looking at her, looking at the boys with their lazy confidence, everyone looking and trying not to be seen.

I saw them at the best table in the cafeteria and I decided to change. It is not hard to change when you were never anything in the first place. It is not hard to put on a T-shirt of a band you overheard the cool kids talking about, to wear tight jeans with holes, to walk by their table and make sure they see you. All it takes is moving off an island to a suburb of Seattle where no one knows who you were before.

You’re in seventh grade. She says this as a statement.

Yes, I answer.

The pink-sweater girls are looking at me like they made a big mistake.

Where are you from? she says.

Bainbridge Island.

I can tell, she says. Come with me. She grabs my wrist and my plastic fork drops. I have some people who want to meet you.

I’m supposed to stand up now. I’m supposed to leave the pizza and the smart girls and go with the girl named Alex to the people who want to meet me. I cannot look back, not at the plate of greasy pizza and the girls who were almost my friends. Just follow Alex. Keep walking. One step. Two steps. I must focus on my face not turning red. Focus on breathing. Stand up straight. Remember, this is what you want.

The boys are getting bigger. I must pretend I don’t notice their stares. I cannot turn red. I cannot smile the way I do when I’m nervous, with my cheeks twitching, my lips curled all awkward and lopsided. I must ignore the burn where Alex holds my wrist too tight. I cannot wonder why she’s holding my wrist the way she does, why she doesn’t trust me to walk on my own, why she keeps looking back at me, why she won’t let me out of her sight. I cannot think of maybes. I cannot think of What if I turned around right now? What if I went the other way? There is no other way. There is only forward, with Alex, to the boys who want to meet me.

I am slowing down. I have stopped. I am looking at big sneakers on ninth grade boys. Legs attached. Other things. Chests, arms, faces. Eyes looking. Droopy, red, big-boy eyes. Smiles. Hands on my shoulders. Pushing, guiding, driving me.

James, this is Cassie, the beautiful seventh grader, Alex says. Hair shaved on the side, mohawk in the middle, face pretty and flawless. This one’s the cutest. This one’s the leader.

Wes, this is Cassie, the beautiful seventh grader. Pants baggy, legs spread, lounging with arms open, baby-fat face. Not a baby, dangerous. He smiles. They all smile.

Jackson, Anthony. I remember their names. They say, Sit down. I do what they say. Alex nods her approval.

I must not look up from my shoes. I must pretend I don’t feel James’s leg touching mine, his mouth so close to my ear. Don’t see Alex whispering to him. Don’t feel the stares. Don’t hear the laughing. Just remember what Mom says about my almond eyes, my dancer’s body, my high cheekbones, my long neck, my hair, my lips, my breasts, all of the things I have now that I didn’t have before.

Cassie, James says, and my name sounds like flowers in his mouth.

Yes. I look at his chiseled chin. I look at his teeth, perfect and white. I do not look at his eyes.

Are you straight? he says, and I compute in my head what this question might mean, and I say, Yes, well, I think so, because I think he wants to know if I like boys. I look at his eyes and know I have made a mistake. They are green and smiling and curious, wanting me to answer correctly. He says, I mean, are you a good girl? Or do you do bad things?

What do you mean by bad things? is what I want to say, but I don’t say anything. I just look at him, hoping he cannot read my mind, cannot smell my terror, will not now realize that I do not deserve this attention, that he’s made a mistake by looking at me in this not-cruel way.

I mean, I noticed you the last couple of days. You seemed like a good girl. But today you look different.

It is true. I am different from what I was yesterday and all the days before that.

So, are you straight? he says. I mean, do you do drugs and stuff?

Yeah, um, I guess so. I haven’t. I will. Yes. I will do anything he wants. I will sit here while everyone stares at me. I will sit here until the bell rings and it is time to go back to class and the girl named Alex says, Give me your number, and I do.

• • •

Even though no one else talks to me for the rest of the day, I hold on to beautiful. I hold on to lunch tomorrow at the best table in the cafeteria. Even though I ride the bus home alone and watch the marina and big houses go by, there are ninth grade boys somewhere who may be thinking about me.

Even though Mom’s asleep and Dad’s at work, even though there are still boxes piled everywhere from the move, even though Mom’s too sad to cook and I eat peanut butter for dinner, and Dad doesn’t come home until the house is dark, and the walls are too thin to keep out the yelling, even though I can hear my mom crying, there is a girl somewhere who has my number. There are ninth grade boys who will want it. There are ninth grade boys who may be thinking about me, making me exist somewhere other than here, making me something bigger than the flesh in the corner of this room. There is a picture of me in their heads, a picture of someone I don’t know yet. She is not the chubby girl with the braces and bad perm. She is not the girl hiding in the bathroom at recess. She is someone new, a blank slate they have named beautiful. That is what I am now: beautiful, with this new body and face and hair and clothes. Beautiful, with this erasing of history.

(TWO)

When we get to my house, I take Alex straight to my room. I don’t show her Mom asleep on the couch or the boxes piled around the apartment or the orange carpet in my parents’ room or their one small window that lets in no light, the bathroom with peeling linoleum, the kitchen that smells like mildew, the deck that barely fits our barbecue and a couple of plastic chairs. I just take her to my room that I went to work on as soon as we got here, the room I could not sleep in until everything was put away, until the posters were all put up straight, the books alphabetized on the bookshelves and sectioned into subject matter and country of origin, the bed made, the clothes folded and tucked into drawers, and everything exactly the way it should be. That was two weeks ago, but there are still boxes everywhere and Mom’s still putting the living room together even though she has nothing to do all day except watch TV and play video games.

Alex hasn’t said anything about the posters on my wall, the ones of cool bands I’ve never even listened to but made Mom buy me at the mall. She doesn’t notice the incense burner or candles or the magazine cutouts of rock stars who look like drug addicts. All she does is laugh and say, You still have stuffed animals? and I laugh and say, I’ve been meaning to get rid of them, and I shove them in the garbage can even though they don’t fit and I have to keep pushing them in while Alex walks around and touches everything. She pulls books out of my bookshelf and does not put them back in alphabetical order.

This one’s fucking thick, she says.

It’s one of my favorite books, I tell her. It’s about the French Revolution when all the poor people rebelled against the government and this guy who used to be a criminal escaped from prison and became good and—

You are such a nerd, she says with a look on her face like she is starting to think she made a mistake about me. She turns around and keeps looking through my shelves until she finds my photo album and says, Ooh, what’s this? and I tell her nothing because there is nothing I can say except lies. She takes it out and sits down and stops talking to me. I sit on my bed, not breathing, waiting for the discovery, waiting for the serious look on her face to change and turn into laughter.

I can hear my mom shuffling around in the living room. Something crashes and I hear her say Shit. Alex laughs but she does not look up.

Why are you in those classes? she says as she continues to flip through the photo album of the girls who were never my friends.

What classes?

The ones for smart kids. She pulls out a picture of Angela from back home, the most popular girl in school. Angela’s wearing a cashmere sweater and skirt. Her hair is blond and perfect and she has a look on her face like anything is possible. I am suddenly embarrassed for her, embarrassed for her confidence and the sun shining on her hair, embarrassed for her soft pink skin. She has no idea there’s a place like here, a place where she is nothing. There are a lot of photos of her in my album, taken at the sixth-grade picnic, at the school play when she was the star, at elementary school graduation. There are no pictures of me. I am always behind the camera. I am always somewhere no one can see me.

Alex tears the picture in half, then in half again. I think it must be a joke, that it was only a piece of paper she tore. The picture must be somewhere still whole.

Why’d you do that? I ask her.

I don’t like her, she answers, and I look in her hands, and Angela is torn into four jagged pieces. Tell me why you’re in the smart classes, she says.

I don’t know.

Are you smart? she says, like she’s asking if I’m retarded.

No. Yes. I don’t know. She is tearing the picture into even smaller pieces. She is looking at me while she does this, tearing slowly and smiling.

Did your parents make you take those classes?

Yes, I say, even though it’s not really true, and the answer seems to satisfy her.

I wish we had classes together, she says, holding up another picture.

Me too, I say. I cannot look upset about the picture. I must act like I know it is funny. I must act like I care about nothing.

Who’s this? she says.

That’s Leslie, I tell her, and for some reason I add, She’s my best friend. She wasn’t as popular as Angela, but she was always my favorite. She was the nicest one in the group, not as rich as the others and kind of quiet. We’re at the sixth grade picnic and we’re at the beach on the weekend before the end of school and Derrick Jenson just kicked the ball into the water and—

Let’s burn her, Alex says.

What? She is crumpling up Leslie in her hand.

Let’s burn all of them. They’re not your friends anymore, are they?

Why not?

You live here now.

We can still be friends.

"No you can’t. They’re on Bainbridge." She says the name of the island like I should be ashamed of it, like it’s beneath her, like anything from there is not welcome here. And even though it’s only on the other side of Seattle, I know that I will never go back. There is nothing there for me, nothing for my mother or father. There is a lake and land and salt water between us. There is a bridge and a ferryboat and trees and dirt roads. There is a whole other world with an entirely different version of me, a me that is not pretty, a me that no boys want, a me she would never talk to. The truth is far worse than she thinks. I am something worse than a preppy girl from an island. I am an ugly girl from an island. I am a girl who can’t talk. I am a girl with a photo album full of people who don’t even know who I am.

I don’t want Alex seeing any more of the pictures. She is right. They are not real. They are not my life. This is my life now and it is better than the pretend one. Alex is better than Leslie and Angela and all the other girls who never existed as anything except snapshots taken in secret, backs walking away, distant echoes of giggles. They are gone. They do not exist. They never existed.

I’m your friend now, right? she says.

Yes.

So you don’t need them.

No.

Alex tells me to tell my mom we’re going for a walk. She puts the photo album in her backpack. Mom is putting framed pictures on