How to Be Brave(32)

Liss and Evelyn strip down in her mom’s room, while I head into the bathroom to change.

“You know we’re going to see you naked in about eight minutes!” Liss yells through the locked door, and Evelyn snickers. Then I hear them whisper something to each other. Probably something about me.

I take off my shirt and bra, pants and underpants, and I throw them in a pile in the corner of the floor. I look at myself in the mirror. I think of something I heard my mom say once, when I was twelve and I couldn’t find a pair of jeans in the Macy’s junior department that could fit me. I sat on the floor of the dressing room, sobbing. She had to take me to the adult section, where all I could find were these ugly, old-lady jeans that gave me high waters. I don’t know why she didn’t just take me to Old Navy or something where things would have been cheaper and cuter and where they actually fit me. I think she just always wanted to treat me well. She wanted me to have nice things even when we couldn’t really afford it.

As I was sitting there on that dirty dressing room floor, piles of size 14s, none of which were even remotely close to fitting me, crumpled around me, my mom rubbed my back and said this: “Skinny girls may look good with clothes on, but bigger girls look better naked. Good ol’ Auguste knew that.”

She was talking about Renoir’s nudes, which were always some of her favorite paintings to stare at. She loved their thick curves and full breasts and thighs full of fasciae and muscle and all kinds of fat that poured over their chairs.

I don’t necessarily agree with my mom. I think Liss and Evelyn and even the likes of Avery and Chloe all have great bodies, and I would kill to be like them.

But I see Mom’s point. I know what she was trying to say.

I look for Renoir’s hand in my own body, and I think I see it. A little bit of beauty. Curvature. Fullness. Abundance. I don’t know if I’ve ever stared at myself naked before, at least not for this long. And not while high.

I look like a woman.

I look like my mother.

“What’s going on in there?” Liss knocks at the door. “Are we going, or what? Don’t chicken out on us now.”

I grab the robe, throw it on, and knot the tie around my waist as tightly as I can. We throw on our shoes and head toward the elevator. The terry cloth is soft on my skin.

*

The elevator carries us up to the fortieth floor, and my body is weighed down by the quick lift against gravity. Liss and Evelyn both have stupid grins on their faces. They’re baked, and so am I, but the realization of what we’re about to do has forced my neurosis to creep back in.

“What if someone catches us?”

Liss rolls her eyes. “Relax, Georgia. No one’s going to catch us.”

“Yeah, but what if they do?”

“Who?” Evelyn says. “The president of the condo association? She’s in Maui.”

“No, like a security guard or something. The front desk guy. I mean, don’t they have cameras?”

“This building’s not that fancy, Georgia,” Evelyn says. “They can’t even afford a night security guard.”

“Let’s just go back downstairs.…”

Evelyn walks over to me and takes me by the shoulders. “Chill out. Seriously. Get back to your happy place. You’ve entered the crazy paranoid place. I’ve been there, and it sucks. But you can get out. Make it a choice, okay?”

Liss nods in agreement. “Nothing’s going to happen. We’re going to swim. That’s it. We’re not actually doing anything wrong.”

Make it a choice.

Easier said than done.

The doors open to an empty hallway. We follow Evelyn toward a locked door. She fumbles with the keys and then pushes open the heavy door to the pool. I know Evelyn says this building isn’t that fancy, but this is pretty damn nice. The windows overlook the entire city. The lights twinkle in the night.

Evelyn sets her keys on a table, kicks off her shoes, and throws off her robe. She’s naked and slender and very pretty. “Let’s do it!” she yells, and then dives in headfirst.

Liss follows her. She throws her clothes next to Evelyn’s and dives in. They’re both in the water, and from up here at the eight-foot marker, I can see their perky breasts bobbing up and down happily. They look like mermaids.

Now I really don’t want to get in. My mom always called her breasts “hangers.” They were big, but they hung low. Unfortunately, my genetic expression is a carbon copy of hers.

“Come on!” they yell. “What are you waiting for? Jump in!”

Idon’twanna. Idon’twanna. Idon’twanna.

I don’t have to do this. I could just go back downstairs, put on my clothes, and crawl on the couch, go to sleep. I don’t have to succumb to the peer pressure.

And then they start chanting, “Number five. Number five. Number five.”

“Shut up, you guys. You’re going to wake up someone!”

“Well, if you don’t get in”—Liss twirls in the water—“we’re going to yell even louder.”

And so Evelyn does. “Number five! Number five!”

“Fine!” I exclaim. “Fine. Just … just give me a minute, okay?”

“Just throw off your robe and get in here!”

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and strip.