Where the Staircase Ends(27)

I took in the way the dress clung to her body and made her look somehow taller and thinner all at the same time. She looked amazing, which made me nauseated. I drained the rest of my screwdriver and inspected the damage I’d done to my manicure.

“It looks great. You should wear that one,” I said honestly, because at the time I was still her friend, and even though I was jealous as hell, I didn’t want to lie to her.

Her smile got really big, reminding me how much she still needed my approval.

“Do you want to wear one of the other ones?” she offered me. Amber and Jenny exchanged envious glances, like I should be so lucky to have Sunny offer to let me wear one of her never-before-worn dresses. I knew an olive branch when I saw one, and it made me feel even guiltier for the way I’d been acting. But I didn’t feel like cramming my body into one of Sunny’s rejected frocks. It would only make me feel worse than I already did.

“Thanks, but you know how much I hate wearing skirts to The Fields. The grass makes my legs all itchy.” I added an ear-to-ear grin to the statement so she’d know I appreciated the offer.

Sunny nodded, and Amber and Jenny looked back at her with such wide-eyed hope that it made me a little sad. If Sunny could tell how badly they wanted her to offer one of the dresses to them, she didn’t show it. She turned her back and collected her wristlet, and in a weird way it made me proud to hold the coveted spot as Sunny’s best friend.

“Let’s go, bitches!” she said, jingling her car keys as she motioned for Jenny and Amber to lead the way downstairs.

“Yeah, let’s blow this popsicle stand!” said Jenny, grabbing her purse as she jiggled her way through the bedroom door. Amber and I exchanged an eye roll.

I inspected my tight-fitting jeans and sparkly top in the full-length mirror before following the girls out the door. Maybe I should have taken Sunny up on her offer. Everything about me seemed plain by comparison. Or maybe I should have listened to my mom’s critiques for once and worn something different.

“Stop checking your hot ass out in the mirror!” Sunny called from the bottom of the stairs. “And grab a roll of toilet paper on the way down!”

I smeared on some lip gloss and took one more look in the mirror, smiling a bit as I let my buzz wash over me, and I thought about how stupid I’d been acting. The tension I’d felt with Sunny was all in my head.

I grabbed a roll of toilet paper from one of the bathroom shelves before heading downstairs. The major downer about The Fields was the lack of bathrooms. We’d unofficially designated the backside of a half-finished house as The Ladies’ Room, but it was BYOTP unless you liked the feel of pee trickling down your leg or you wanted people to call you Yellow-Leg The Pirate like they did to Missy Springs after the unfortunate toilet paperless incident. People still hadn’t forgotten that one. Sunny’s favorite thing to do whenever she saw someone walking in the direction of The Ladies’ Room was to yell “ARRRRRrrrrr you going to the bathroom?” in her best pirate voice while squinting one eye and making her finger into the shape of a hook. It made me laugh every time.

The girls were already in The Bee when I got downstairs; I could hear them giggling through the open door leading out to the garage.

“No way,” said Jenny. My skin prickled with irritation as I realized she might have taken my regular spot in the front seat. “How did she take it? Isn’t she, like, still in love with him? God, he’s so hot.”

It was hard to make out all the words over the rumble of the car engine, but Sunny said the next sentence loudly enough so the words made their way through the open door and into the kitchen where I eavesdropped.

“She doesn’t know,” she said, and then they all giggled the way girls do when they have a secret. “So don’t say anything, okay? I’ll break it to her later, once I’ve had a chance to talk to him tonight and confirm it.”

Jenny let out another giggle. “Oh, please! In that dress, there’s no way he’s picking her over you. It’s not even a fair competition, really.”

“Oh, stop it,” Sunny scolded, but the giggle that followed said she really didn’t mean it.

I told myself they could be talking about anyone. There were hundreds of girls in our high school and hundreds of boys to choose from. Sunny was my best friend. She wasn’t talking about me.

But as soon as I walked into the garage the giggling stopped and they all exchanged looks, the way girls do when they think they’re being discreet but really they’re as obvious as a bulldozer.

Jenny quickly scrambled out of the front seat so I could take my usual spot.

“You take the front,” she offered, “I was just keeping it warm for you.” She gave me one of her big phony smiles and fluffed her mass of curls. She looked at me the same way I looked at other people right after Sunny said something about them.

“Thanks, Jenny,” I said, my teeth clenched and my smile tight. It was my imagination, I told myself. I was being paranoid. But just in case, I grabbed the lever at the bottom of the passenger seat and yanked it up, moving the seat back as far as it would go so Jenny had minimal leg room. She squeezed into the back seat without a word, and it gave me satisfaction when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her all scrunched up and uncomfortable against the seat. Now she looked like a Christmas ham jammed into a Ziploc sandwich bag and shoved into the back of the refrigerator. Ha.