Pink Smog Page 4

  I closed my eyes and pushed my head back against the headrest. Some of the stuffing was coming out of the seat underneath me. The car smelled musty, like sawdust. The engine rumbled in the back. Bugs were weird, really, like little animals. There used to be this one that drove around town with eyelashes attached over the headlights.

  “Well, now you have to. Tell me, I mean.”

  “I didn’t think I’d have to help you so many times,” he said. “I mean, it’s only been a few days since he left, right? I didn’t think I’d ever even have to meet you.”

  “Oh, great, thanks.”

  He parked the car and turned to look at me. I sat frozen in profile, the gum in my lank hair. What did he see when he looked at me? What did anyone see? Not someone lovable enough to keep her father from leaving.

  I flashed back to a year before, riding on a bus in San Francisco with my dad.

  Charlie has taken Weetzie there for her twelfth birthday. They stay in a tiny, lovely Victorian hotel on a steep hill and eat fettuccine at an Italian restaurant. The waiter takes her food away before she is done and she cries—Charlie orders her a whole new plate, fresh and steaming. She is happy but tries not to think about the fact that her mom isn’t there with them.

  That weekend is the first time she thinks she is in love. On the bus there is a beautiful man, the most beautiful man she has ever seen, tall and thin with sparkling green eyes and golden skin and hair and a gold hoop in his ear. He is holding a bouquet of roses and she can’t help thinking he is the one. It sounds silly to someone who doesn’t understand but she is devastated by the fact that this man doesn’t notice her, even though she could so easily imagine spending the rest of her life with him. She doesn’t realize until later that why she was so upset, why she had this fantasy at all, had to do with the fact that her mom isn’t there, that they weren’t traveling as a family.

  Love is so weird.

  “I have to go,” I said to Winter, and I got out.

  “If you didn’t keep getting into trouble, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said, not looking at me, his eyes on the steering wheel.

  “I’m not getting myself into trouble! It was that girl with the dogs! You’re the one who knows her!”

  “And the girls at school?” he said, still staring straight ahead.

  “I don’t need any more of your help. I’m perfectly fine without you,” I told him in my movie star voice as I slammed the door and skated over the cement. When I was upset the rumbling seemed to go right up through my whole body. It was like the streets of Los Angeles talking to me, warning me. A chilly breeze made my whole body shiver with the knowledge that the summer was really over and that autumn wasn’t really all that romantic in L.A., just cooler. A cloud passed over the sun, turning the sky dark. I stopped at the bottom of my staircase. Devil Girl wasn’t there, the chows weren’t there. I felt a mild twinge of disappointment, though. If there was nothing to be protected from, then no one would protect me. If there were no devils, no guardian angels were needed. I took off my skates, draped them over my shoulder, and ran up to my front door and into the baby-blue room, where my reflection watched me in the gold-veined mirror-paneled wall beside the bar, and there was really nothing to protect me from except myself.

  Later that night I showered and clipped the huge wad of gum out of my hair. It left a big raggedy space.

  Mirror mirror on the wall.

  I wasn’t anyone fairest. It made me think the note I’d received was a mean-spirited joke. I looked like a freak.

  Pixie-cut time again. So much for my wings.

  So I clipped and clipped and pretty soon my hair was short again. At least the hole was gone but the ends were uneven. I couldn’t look at it anymore so I went to check on my mom.

  She was wearing the same yellow negligee and faded pink bathrobe. There was a time when she wore long, peach silk dressing gowns with puffed sleeves and French lace, strips of sheer creamy chiffon running down the sides. She sometimes pinned gardenias in her hair. They smelled so good I wanted to eat them.

  “You have to get out of the house,” I told her. “Can I help you pick out an outfit? We could go shopping and out to dinner.” That was what to do when we were depressed, after my parents fought and my dad left for a few days. We went to Contempo Casuals boutique and Bullock’s department store—there was something comforting about silver escalators ascending skyward, glass walls, eternally poised mannequins, and racks and racks of clothes—and then we ate burgers and fries and drank milk shakes in frosty silver tumblers. Not that I felt like doing any of that anymore.

  She looked up at me blearily. The TV was blaring an afternoon talk show. The curtains were drawn closed and the room felt hot and musty. Dust motes sizzled in the sunlight above the shag carpet, like burning fairies.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked her.

  She raised an empty glass to me.

  “Come on, Mom. We’ll go out to Norm’s or something. I have a little extra cash in my piggy bank. You need a treat.”

  She shook her head. “I need him.”

  “I know.” I sat down next to her and put my arms around her shoulders. They felt harder than ever, as if she were trying to grow a shell to hide in.

  “He’ll come back,” I said.

  She shook her head again, the bleach-burnt hair falling over her tan face. I noticed the chipped red polish on her toes in the gold mules and it shocked me. This was Brandy-Lynn. Polish was never chipped—even in the worst of circumstances polish was perfect.

  That was when the phone rang. We both jolted and then sat frozen staring. It rang three times. Then the machine came on. The caller hung up.

  Why hadn’t I answered it?

  “He won’t come back,” she said. “I thought he loved me and I thought he loved you more. But it isn’t true. He can’t love you either, not really, to go away like that.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears and I thought, I am never going to cry about this. No matter what, I am not going to cry. Because what is the point? Crying is really never going to make him come back. Maybe if he sees me smiling, maybe that will work. Maybe if he senses that I am helping people, that I am strong and nice and worth coming back for…

  Of course, I knew it was impossible but I thought it anyway. That Charlie could see me in the crystal ball in his head and come back.

  I was going to take care of myself, I decided. I was not only going to take care of myself, I was going to take care of as many other people as I could. I didn’t need that boy named Winter, whoever or whatever he was, to take care of me. I’d show him. I’d show my dad.

  That night I washed the dishes that had piled up, vacuumed the carpet, cleaned the bathroom, and did the laundry. I heated up a can of tomato soup for dinner and tried to get my mom to eat it. In the morning I did all the dishes before I went to school.

  Are you looking, Daddy?

  In Miss Spinner’s class I was hunched over my English test, pressing the number two pencil hard into the paper and against the bump that had formed on the side of my middle finger, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I tried to ignore it. Staci slid the slam book into my lap.

  “Nice chop, Louise,” she whisper-hissed.

  Lily Chin was on the other side of me. I saw a worried look shadow her face and darken her eyes behind her glasses. She had a long, thin neck, braces, and an overdeveloped jaw. At lunchtime she always sat alone, gnawing on those apples as if she both hated them and desired them more than anything in the world.

  Suddenly, I felt a tug and the slam book fell off my lap onto the floor. I looked down and saw there was a string attached to it. Staci dropped the end of the string and made a fake-surprised “O” with her mouth.

  Miss Spinner looked up.

  “What’s this?” she said, coming over to my desk.

  “It’s a slam book, Miss Spinner,” said Staci daintily. “Louise has been passing it around.”

  “Is this true, Louise?”

  “Weetzie,” I sa
id. “No. I didn’t…”

  Miss Spinner picked up the book and looked at the last page. She put it on my desk, right in front of me. Someone had written in pink pen under Doggiest Teacher: Miss Spinster has to cross her legs like that because she hasn’t ever gotten laid.

  Miss Spinner picked up the pink pen that I kept on my desk. She tapped it on the slam book.

  “I didn’t write that,” I said.

  “Please take this piece of fine literature to Mrs. Musso’s office,” Miss Spinner said.

  “I didn’t write it!”

  “Go. Now.”

  Staci smiled at me like I was a piece of sandwich meat and it was 11:45. Lily Chin looked up, alarmed.

  I found Lily Chin at lunch. The principal, Mrs. Musso, had let me go when I told her that the pink writing wasn’t mine. She made me show her a writing sample. I apologized anyway on the way out.

  “Let’s not have it happen again,” she barked at me, like those chow dogs that had tried to attack. She wore her chow-red hair in a helmet style and mannish skirt suits, her feet jammed into her shoes so her ankles bulged over the top. I wished I could have taken her shopping and to the beauty salon. Actually, I wished I could take myself to the beauty salon and get my hair fixed—maybe I’d go after school with the piggy-bank money my mom hadn’t wanted.

  Lily Chin and her apple were sitting alone. She was looking at it with an enraptured expression. She was dressed in a baggy sweatshirt, what looked like boy’s trousers, and suede Wallabees on her feet. Her hair was in a thin ponytail. I went over and sat down next to her.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She looked at me warily.

  I tried to find something to compliment about her clothing. That was the best icebreaker between girls in junior high. Then I noticed her ring—a glassy stone in a silver filigree setting. It was a dark yellow color.

  “Cool ring,” I said.

  A faint smile touched her face like a beam of the sunlight that was sifting through the moving leaves. It revealed the flashing metal of her braces and then was gone. “Thanks.”

  “Is it a mood ring?”

  “Yeah.”

  I tried to remember what the colors meant. The murky yellow didn’t seem to be a good sign.

  “You okay?”

  She shrugged and examined the ring.

  “I think blue is happy?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said.

  “Can I sit with you?”

  She nodded and I sat on the bench next to her. I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and she massacred her apple. I offered her half a frosted Pop-Tart but she looked at it like it might bite back so I quickly returned it to my lunch box. We hardly talked at all but I found it comforting to be sitting with somebody.

  When the bell rang I looked at her hand. The ring was milk-blue.

  Mirror mirror.

  I couldn’t give Mrs. Musso a makeover but I could give myself one. After school I went to see Kurt the hairstylist. I brought the last of the dog-walking savings from my piggy bank—my mom didn’t seem to care about going out with me anyway.

  Kurt had a fancy little salon on Melrose. It was all glass and chrome with pounding music. The singer hollered above the driving guitar. Kurt wore his golden hair in a layered shag cut, dressed in patchwork bell-bottoms, embroidered shirts, and platforms.

  “Weetzie!” he cried when I walked in. “What did you do to your hair? You look like creatures nibbled on you.”

  “Hi, Kurt. A mean girl stuck gum in it.”

  “Oh those meanies keep getting worse every year. By the time you have kids they’ll be shaving each other’s hair off while they sleep. Although, you’d actually look pretty bald.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t get huffy on me. Come sit down.”

  He shampooed my scalp with deep, sensual strokes, then spent a long time dramatically ruffling my hair, examining me from every angle. You couldn’t talk to him during this point—his eyes would get cartoon-huge and he’d make a zipping motion over his mouth.

  When he was done he began to snip meticulously. It was even more forbidden to talk to him at this phase. Then he applied mousse as if it were whipped cream on a banana split and blow-dried my hair with sweeping motions, tossing his own gilt-highlighted mane back and forth and eyeing himself in the mirror. I could talk then.

  “What’s the music?”

  “The New York Dolls. Music and fashion icons. You like?”

  “Yeah. It sounds cool. My dad played them for me before, I think.”

  “What a little rocker he is. I’m going to get hold of him one of these days. That barbershop doesn’t do him justice. How is he?”

  Charlie had taken me to get my hair cut once. Kurt wanted to get his hands on his hair but my dad hurried off to get coffee and picked me up in front when it was over.

  I shrugged. “I haven’t heard from him in days.”

  “What? Where’d he go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You need to find him! Tell him to get his butt right back here now!”

  “He and my mom got in a fight.”

  “Brandy-Lynn!” he scolded. “Why doesn’t she come in and have her roots done? I’ll have a little talk with her.”

  “It’s too late, I think,” I said. “She’s a mess.”

  Kurt fussed over my hair, applying hair spray with sweeping movements like he was an insect doing some kind of mating dance. “Well, maybe she’ll come see me when she sees how great you look. Ready to go blonde, Weetz-ala?”

  “Not today,” I told him. “I don’t have the cash. Plus, my mom would kill me.”

  He ignored the second reason because we both knew my mom wouldn’t really care—she was too drunk all the time. “It just takes a bottle of bleach and a sink to do it yourself, lover. Now go get those meanies for me!”

  On my way out he yelled after me, “Oh, and remember to be nice to you! Take Weetzie on a fabulous date. It’s good practice.”

  That night I sat at my mom’s sewing machine holding a dress she’d made for me when I was ten. I wanted to keep the dress exactly the way it was, to remind me of my childhood when she made my clothes, even after we left the cottage, sewing each stitch so lovingly, but I also wanted to cut that dress up, make it into something completely different so I could forget. Plus, I needed something to wear on my date with me! I took a pair of scissors and cut out the purple roses printed on the dress and appliquéd them all over a pair of old jeans. And then I sewed one big rose onto the front of a white T-shirt. It was a way to remember and forget at the same time.

  The next day at lunch Lily told me I looked cute.

  “Thanks. I had to cut my hair.”

  “And your outfit,” she said. I wondered if she hadn’t been talking about my hair at all. I touched the back. It suddenly felt way too short.

  “If you want you can come over and I’ll dress you up.”

  She laughed. It was the first time I’d seen her do that. Her little teeth showed.

  “I’d look dumb,” she said, nodding at my purple roses.

  “No you wouldn’t. Besides, we’d put you together differently.”

  “Okay,” she said. Then she asked, “Why are you being so nice?”

  I didn’t want to explain about my vow to be nice so that my dad might come back. “You seem cool,” I said. “Not like Staci and her friends.”

  “Yeah. I’m not like them at all.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I mean, look at my hair!”

  “Look at mine!”

  We laughed. Just then, Bobby Castillo walked by. He stopped and smiled at us.

  “Oh, my God!” said Lily. “Did you see that? He’s so cute.”

  “His eyelashes go to his toes,” I said. “And he’s coming over here.”

  “Hey,” said Bobby Castillo with a ferocious grin. “I heard you took the heat for that piece of shit that was going around.”

  “How’d you hear that?”
/>   “It’s all over.”

  He came and sat next to us. He was so ridiculously foxy that we just stared at him. I felt my cheeks smolder.

  “Yeah,” I finally said. “Staci tried to make it look like I wrote that thing about Miss Spinner.”

  “Staci Nettles is a bitch,” Bobby Castillo observed matter-of-factly. “What I don’t get is why people don’t think being mean sucks. You can’t be fat or skinny or too smart but you can be an asshole and it’s a bonus point.”

  “You can’t have pimples and you can’t not have a boyfriend,” Lily added.

  “You can’t not have boobs,” I said.

  “It’s fucked up,” said Bobby Castillo. His pretty lips sure could spew the four-letter words. I was impressed.

  “We should start the anti-mean club,” I said.

  “Yeah. The mean people suck club.”

  The club for cool outcasts.

  That was one club I wanted to belong to. I looked at Lily hunched in her sweatshirt, the sleeves pulled over her hands. She was cold, shivering slightly, even in the heat. Bobby Castillo, with his lean torso, his long, skinny legs, reclining on his side now, like a wildcat beside us. And me in roses. I realized that mean people had their purpose, too. They brought you together. They unified you. They made you find your friends.

  MOUSETTE

  That afternoon I decided to take myself out to the movies as Kurt had suggested. Though I wondered how much it was okay to go on imaginary dates with imaginary friends and when it got to be something you needed to see a doctor about.

  But, a sign of looniness or not, I needed practice. I hadn’t been to a movie since Charlie took me to Funny Lady, and I was working my way to asking Bobby and Lily out soon.

  I rode the bus to Hollywood Boulevard and watched Benji at the Chinese Theater. I loved movies with dogs in them but Benji’s sparky eyes and perky teeth made me want a dog so much that I kind of wished I had chosen to see something else, even Funny Lady again. To cheer myself up about not owning a dog, I went to Will Wright’s and got a pistachio, chocolate, and strawberry ice-cream cone—my own Neapolitan mix. It was fun to be out by myself in Hollywood, tripping merrily along the stars with names famed and forgotten, thinking of my new friends and the pleasure I was having, even all alone. I bought a shirt that said HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA! and had some palm trees and shooting stars on it. I pretended I was a starlet on a date, waiting to be discovered. No one seemed to notice me at all but I didn’t care—I was having fun!