Big Summer(22)
I looked Darshi over, her glasses and braces, her name-brand-less sneakers and her wild tumble of hair. I pictured Drue and her friends, their effortless updos, their beautiful clothes. I remembered something my father had told me over the summer, when we’d been talking about my new school. The friends you make at Lathrop will be your friends for the rest of your life. “Okay,” I said. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You think I’m lying.” Darshi’s voice was resigned, her expression forlorn.
“No!” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.
“Just watch out,” she said as the late bell trilled. At my old school, the class changes had been signaled by harsh buzzers that gave the school the feeling of a prison. Lathrop had actual bells.
“Okay,” I said, in a loud, hearty voice. “Okay, well, thanks again.” I hurried away from her down the hall, toward the sounds of a coach’s whistle and sneakers squeaking on hardwood floors… and there was Drue, in her Lathrop School T-shirt and blue and white cotton shorts, waiting for me at the entrance to the girls’ locker room, which had floors tiled in the school colors of blue and white, and skylights, and wooden lockers, and shower stalls with curtains.
“Hey!” she cheered, and did a bouncy little dance. Her legs, I saw, were smooth and tan, unmarred by a single scab or scar or swath of unshaved hair. My own legs had pink, squiggly stretch marks around the knees and on my upper thighs, and I knew, without looking, that there was at least one patch of leg hair I’d missed in the shower that morning. “Will you be my partner? Please? I’m terrible at volleyball.” She gave me a dazzling smile, and I found that I was helpless not to smile back.
“Ladies!” yelled Ms. Abbott, as I scrambled into my gym clothes. “On the court now, please!”
Drue grabbed my hand and led me out to the gym.
“Daphne’s with me,” she announced, and pulled me against her, into the zone of her protection and approval and everything that it conveyed.
Chapter Five
At seven o’clock, after both Dr. Snitzers had come home and the kids were washing up for dinner, I took the subway to the apartment that Darshi and I shared on the edge of Morningside Heights, not far from where I’d grown up. Darshi and I had kept in touch all through college and especially after the bar fight, so after I’d been back home for two years, and Darshini had returned to go to graduate school, we’d agreed to find a place to share. My mother’s starving-artist grapevine meant that we’d known about the listing a day before the rest of the world, and we’d scooped up a decently sized two-bedroom in a not-very-fashionable neighborhood. The apartment, a third-floor walk-up, had tiny, oddly shaped bedrooms, but also a good-size kitchen and a wood-burning fireplace, which I liked, and was quiet, which Darshi appreciated, and over the past few years, we’d made it our own.
I looped the garment bag over my arm and started the climb. It was Tuesday, one of the weeknights that Darshi didn’t have class or office hours. Normally, I would be looking forward to our weekly ritual of takeout and bad reality TV, but that night, all I felt was dread. For more than a week, I’d been keeping my secret. Tonight I was going to tell Darshi that Drue Cavanaugh was back in my life—and, by extension, her life, too.
As soon as I was through the door, my dog Bingo was scampering around my knees, her stocky body whirling in circles of delight: You’re back! You’re back! You’re back!
I’d acquired Bingo a few days after the bar-fight video. I’d been plodding along Broadway, going nowhere in particular, mostly because moving through the real world reminded me that the online one was mostly an illusion—or at least not as real as it felt. Most of the people currently discussing my looks and my body were strangers, I would tell myself as I walked. Some of them weren’t even people at all.
My father was at work—Lathrop’s spring break hadn’t lined up with mine. My mother was home for most of the day, teaching art classes in the afternoon and at night. I’d told her about the video by then, although not about Drue’s role in the whole affair, and she’d been fussing over me like I was an invalid, giving me teary, pitying looks, asking if I wanted tea or some chicken broth, or offering to let me use the gift certificate I’d bought her for Mother’s Day to get a massage. (“Do you think having a stranger touch me is going to help?” I’d almost snapped.)
It was better to be out of the house. So I’d gone for long, rambling walks, sometimes spending an hour or two in a bookstore or a museum before returning home. That afternoon, I’d been on my way home when I had walked past a pet store on Broadway and noticed the sign in its window: Take Home a Friend.
I considered the sign. I’d lost a friend, that night at the bar. Clearly, I could use a new one. Our building permitted pets, although we’d never had one. Mrs. Adelson at the end of the hall had owned a succession of Highland terriers, while the Johnsons on the fifth floor had a small, high-strung Chihuahua.
The dog in the window had the stumpy body with the broad chest and corkscrew tail of a pug or a French bulldog, but instead of being flat and wrinkly, her face had a short snout, and ears that stood straight up in the air and swiveled at my approach. Her coat was brindle, russet brown with dark-brown bands, and her eyes were big and brown. Per her sign, she had just been spayed, and she wore a red knitted sweater and a plastic cone around her neck to keep her from licking her stitches. As I peered through the window, she was halfheartedly gnawing a cloth toy that she clutched between her front paws. The poster in her window identified her as “pug/terrier/?” and read “Hello, my name is BINGO. I was a stray in Georgia and was found wandering the streets. I’m a sweet, shy girl who has come up north looking for a furever home. I am a little anxious, but I’ll be a loyal friend once I get to know you! Please come in and say hello!”