“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “I guess their grandmothers could have done it.” She stalked away, leaving me alone in the deepening gloom with the smell of water. “I for one don’t think I could do it, though,” she said over her shoulder. I suddenly felt a very deep craving to throw something hard at her retreating back. I imagined the weight of the rock in my hand; I knew exactly how I would shift my weight to give me equilibrium for launching the rock from my palm.
Instead, I ran after her and grabbed her hand. “I DON’T WANT YOUR GERMS ON ME!” she shrieked, wrenching free and taking off running. I let her get far ahead of me, so that she was just a moving shape on the horizon, and then I started running too. I didn’t want to be left in the dark. Plus I knew she’d come around. She always did. She said mean things to me, but I never really thought she meant them.
The sun had gone down far enough that the little evening-bats were out, circling and diving overhead. I slowed my running home long enough to throw a few small rocks up in the air, to watch the bats swoop toward them. Momma told me once that if curly-headed girls played outside after dark fell, they were liable to get a bat stuck in their hair. I was never entirely sure if I believed her, but the thought was so terrifying it was enough to keep me from wanting to be out after the sun went down.
By the time I made it home, Cara and Lyra were arguing about whether or not Depeche Mode would prefer their two most adoring fans to wear tutus or no tutus to the next concert. I hung back in the shadow of the doorway listening to them argue like sisters do. I was still sweating from my run home, and wishing that some of their blonde glamour would spill out and settle on me.
“Why’re you lurking in the doorway?” Lyra drawled at me. Her voice still had the Irish brogue that she could lay on thick like jam on toast. Of course, the accent was just icing on the cake of the Bearden Girls’ glory: they were too cute to be believed, blonde, so incredibly intelligent, well-mannered, and then, ohmigosh those accents. Either one of them could make you feel privileged just to be noticed by them, but Cara was my best friend. And I? Well, I didn’t really have anything very special about me, just a head fulla kinky curls that Cara brushed out once to see “how big” my hair could get. So where they were fair, I was dark. Where they were straight I was curly. Where they were so well-rounded, I was just sort of ordinary.
“I asked why you are lurking in my doorway,” Lyra demanded, glaring at my reflection in her mirror. “Oh, I was just, um, waitin’ on Cara,” I stammered. Lyra always made me a little nervous. She was practically grown since she had already got her period. She always seemed kinda mad, so I mostly just tried to stay away from her.
Lyra rolled her eyes. “You two brats get outta my room,” she ordered. Cara pulled a face and I tried to stifle a giggle. “I mean it. You’re getting on my nerves and I’m trying to concentrate.” She bent her head over her desk where she was braiding bits of string together.
“Whatcha workin’ on?” Cara asked, plopping down on Lyra messy bed. “Maybe we can help.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. I knew two things with the wiggling of those eyebrows: 1) I should keep my mouth shut, since that was our signal for Cara to do the talking; and 2) she had already forgotten our fight before we ran back to the house. I grinned at her.
“I’m making these awesome friendship bracelets to raise money for my new publishing venture. So no, you may not help unless you want to help by buying some.”
“I don’t have any cash to buy one of your dumb bracelets,” Cara retorted, kicking a pile of clothes off the bed and into the floor. I snickered. “Wait, what ‘publishing venture’?”
“Don’t worry about it, you little jerks, it’s not a kids’ book.” Lyra didn’t notice the toppled pile of clothes, or Cara’s nasty trainers on her bed. She did, however, notice me still leaning against the doorframe. “Are you still here? Get out!” she yelled. We scrammed.
An hour or so later, I snuck back to Lyra’s room. The door was closed but not latched, and I could hear the thump of her stereo from inside. I nudged the door open with the toe of my shoe.
Lyra was lying flat on her back on the bed, flipping through a magazine. “What do you want dork?” she asked. “Ever heard of knocking?”
I gulped. “Hey, uh, Lyra, I think I wanna buy one of those bracelets you were making.”
She glared at me disdainfully over her magazine. I dropped my gaze and stubbed my toe into the carpet. I could feel myself shrinking and getting smaller with her watching me. After a few seconds, I was just a bug, and I wished I hadn’t come.
“Why do you like her so much?” she asked very softly. “She’s like, one of your only friends. And that’s really weird, you know?” She had propped up on one elbow, and looked genuinely interested in how a bug would respond to an obviously rhetorical question. I thought I was going to faint; her accent was a lilting melody that disoriented me.
After a few beats, I summoned all my faculties and shrugged heavily. She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She glanced at my pocket, so I began fishing around for a few quarters to give her. “They cost-“ I pulled a crumpled five dollar bill I had left over from my allowance, “exactly five dollars each,” she finished, holding out her palm. I gave her the money, and then moved to where she pointed at a row of braided bracelets spread across her desk. I quickly chose one and headed to the door.
Maybe the sudden rush of courage I felt was just because I was leaving her stifling presence, or maybe it was because I could feel myself transforming back from a bug to a girl again. Either way, I suddenly felt bold enough to say at the threshold, “You should ask the man in the moon why I like her. That’s what I do when I have a serious question that I can’t really ask anybody else. Then when you go to sleep, sometimes he’ll give you the answer in your dream.” I blushed, embarrassed to have spoken at all.
Her eyebrows knit together, she watched me leave her room.
