All the Rage(20)

“It’s my job. I’ve got to do it for everybody.” He turns to me. “And you. You learn something?”

“Every single time,” I tell him.

After I’ve been banned from driving the New Yorker until we all forget about the time I took it without asking and the sheriff brought me home, I have to ask my mother to drive me to Swan’s. It’s a quiet ride out. She keeps clenching her jaw. It’s not until we reach the town sign, she asks, “What happened today?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t just get in a car and go for nothing.” She pauses. “If something happened and I can do something about it, you should tell me.”

“Nothing happened.”

She sighs and turns the radio on. Cattle graze in fields off the road and they look sleepy with the heat. When I was nine, my mom got hired to clean a hall out in the country after it got rented for a wedding. Dad had been at the bottle all day and she didn’t want me to stay with him, so I went with her. I filled my pockets with diamond confetti that got all over the floors while she swept, vacuumed, scrubbed, and wiped down surfaces.

Behind the building was a field and when the potpourri scent of her cleaner made me sneeze, I went outside. There were calves there, these sweet things that watched me with less interest than I watched them. There was this raggedy one, sitting in the middle of the field, its mother nearby. I didn’t realize it was sick until it tried to get up and it couldn’t. It kept trying and it couldn’t and then, eventually—it didn’t. After a while, a truck drove in. A man and a boy got out, looked it over while its mother stood close. It was dead, the calf. Dead and too heavy to load into the truck bed, so they tied a rope around its neck, tied the other end to the truck and dragged it off the field like that. Its mother watched until it disappeared and when it was out of view, she called for it. Just kept calling for it so long after it was gone. Sometimes I feel something like that, between my mom and me. That I’m the daughter she keeps calling for so long after she’s been gone.





her cheerleading uniform hugs the smooth contours of her body. Her arms are up and out and her pom-poms are secured tightly to her hands. The megaphone sits between her legs. All that school spirit in all that girl and in a single day, they wasted her. She inspires nothing now.

I’m making my way to homeroom when Brock’s shoulder clips mine and sends me staggering back. The sharp hurt of it radiates out, promising a bruise. He whirls around and I’ve got so many variations of f*ck you to throw in his face but I swallow them all when he smiles at me with every single one of his teeth. He glances at Alek beside him. Alek holds his hand out, signaling Brock to stop, so Brock does. Brock shoves both his hands in his pockets and makes himself look almost conversational.

“Hey, Brock,” Alek says loudly, as a group of students pass. They slow. “You hear about how my dad pulled Grey over yesterday night? She was drunk.”

Another few students come down the opposite side of the hall and they stop for this. Brock raises his voice. “No, Alek. I didn’t hear about how your dad pulled Grey over yesterday night. You say she was drunk?”

“Yeah.” Alek steps toward me. “Feet together, hands at your sides, right, Grey? That what he told you to do because you were so smashed?”

“I wasn’t—”

“Swerving all over the road? That’s what Dan Conway says, and he’s the one who called your sorry ass in.” Alek’s eyes gleam. “Like father, like daughter, right? Meanwhile my dad had to waste his time seeing you home, make sure you didn’t kill anyone.”

It’s amazing how bad you can make the truth sound. As long as you keep it partially recognizable when you spit it out, a crowd will eat it up without even thinking about how hard you chewed on it first. They’re all rabid for Wake Lake, all of them, and I’m the bone that’s going to keep their mouths wet while they wait. I let them have it because some things you can’t do anything about. So it’s bell to bell, class to class. They look at me, whispering those words that came straight from Alek’s mouth. Like father, like daughter. At lunch, I pass a guy who calls me Jane and then immediately apologizes with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Sorry,” he says. “All you bitches look the same.”

By the time the last bell rings, three of my nails are chipping.

When I first started with the nail polish, I didn’t know anything about it. The red would flake off before the day was half out, my nails would split and, over time, they turned yellow. And then I learned. Removing polish is a process too.

It’s less of one than the manicure itself, but still. I open my bedroom window and lay everything I need on my desk before I begin. Scrub brush, remover, a bowl and cotton balls, Q-tips, nail strengthener, and a piece of cardboard to protect the finish of my desk.

I wash my hands in the bathroom and start with the scrub brush, working it back and forth under my nails until they feel clean. Next, I unroll a cotton ball and tear it into fingernail-sized pieces. I pour the remover into the bowl and dip the bits of cotton—one at a time—into it and then set them onto the nails of my left hand. I give a few minutes to let the remover do its job, to eat away at the color. When those minutes have passed, I press into the cotton and swipe the polish off. I take a Q-tip dipped in remover for the edges because I never get it all. Repeat with the right hand. I apply the strengthener and wait for it to set. After enough time has passed, I clear off my desk and get everything else I need to finish the job. Cleanser and dehydrator, base coat, polish, top coat.