Keeping The Moon(41)

going through the stacks of CDs. Then a click as she shut the top of the player and another as she hit the button.

The music started.

_”At first I was afraid, I was petrified _…”

Morgan went to the sink. She splashed at her face, again and again, until the water didn’t run green anymore. Then she lifted her

head and smiled at her reflection, at the bits of green speckled here and there along her hairline. “She’s so crazy,” she said

to me softly. But she was smiling.

“Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side....”

And outside the door, suddenly, I heard Isabel singing along. “But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong!”

“And I grew strong!” Morgan yelled back. “And I learned how to get along!”

The door flew open and there was Isabel, arms over her head, hips shaking, eyes closed as she channeled some long-ago disco queen.

Her face was green, her curlers bobbing madly.

“And so you’re back from outer space,” she sang, off-key “I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your

face....” Morgan moved forward, past me, snapping her fingers over her head while Isabel turned and started shimmying down the

hallway. Morgan followed, skipping from side to side, doing some sort of strange booty-slap.

It was like the first night I’d seen them, and I wished I was back on Mira’s roof, watching from a safe distance.

I walked behind them, keeping my eyes on the door. It was like being caught in some weird tribal ritual, fire walking or glass

swallowing, and not knowing the correct way to carefully extract yourself. I dodged when they started doing the bump, Isabel’s

energetic hip swings knocking Morgan halfway across the room, and put my hand on the screen door. They had completely forgotten me.

“Colie!”

Or maybe not.

I turned back, pushing the door open as I did so. “Yeah?”

“Come on!” Morgan was waving me over as she shook her hips. The music was still cranking and the song, the stupid song, seemed to

be endless.

“I have to—”

But now she was coming over, still dancing, and reached out to grab my hand. “Come on,” she said, and gave me a good yank,

pulling me back toward them.

“I told you,” I yelled back at her, over the music, “I don’t dance.”

“We’ll show you,” she said, misunderstanding me. The song was ending now, fading out note by note.

“No,” I said, loudly, pulling my arm back. She looked surprised, then hurt, and it was suddenly very quiet, with just the last

bits of my loud objection settling around us.

“What is your problem?” Isabel said.

“I don’t dance.” I folded my arms across my chest, taking all of myself back. “I told you that.” And I didn’t care if they

laughed at me, or hated me. I didn’t care what they would say when I was gone.

They exchanged looks. Isabel shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. Then she reached up and undid one of her curlers, a perfect blonde

corkscrew falling down over her eyes. “We need to get ready, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Morgan agreed, but she looked more hesitant, still watching my face. “We do.”

“Ready?” I said.

“To go out,” Isabel said over her shoulder. “You really haven’t done a Chick Night, have you?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, hurry up,” Morgan scolded me. “And shut that door. We have work to do.”





Chapter Eleven


“You can’t have a good Chick Night,” Morgan said, leaning in to the mirror to curl her eyelashes, “without at least one cat-

fight.”

“And somebody has to cry, at least once,” Isabel said. “With us, it’s usually Morgan.”

“Is not,” Morgan said, fluffing her bangs, now somewhat fixed.

Isabel caught my eye in the mirror and nodded.

I was sitting on the bed as they stood in front of Isabel’s tiny vanity, adding on and tweezing away, emphasizing and concealing

with the spread of makeup before them. The entire room smelled of perfume and smoke, the latter from the curling iron that Isabel

had accidentally set on a stack of magazines. The fire had been small but dramatic, burning Cindy Crawford’s lovely face to a

crisp.

The closest I’d come to this was watching my mother get ready for dates, something I’d been doing for as long as I could

remember. Even in the Fat Years, my mother made time for a social life. It was my job to sit on the bed and hold the box of

Kleenex, handing them over as needed to rub in blush or blot lipstick. It was also my job to answer the door, lead her date to the

one good chair that always traveled with us—a recliner we’d bought off the side of the road in Memphis for fifty bucks—and make

small talk until my mother made her entrance, smelling of whatever perfume insert had been in Cosmo that month.

This was different. This time, I was the one who was going.

“Sit up straight,” Isabel scolded after I’d been sat, on orders, in the chair facing the mirror. “Slouching is the first dead