Chapter 3
For once in my life I’m happy I have dodo brothers. Honestly, they have no clue what’s going on. They’re both in their little dodo worlds. Mitch is upstairs slaying fake beasts and conquering fake worlds and probably getting a big old boner. Brian is downstairs watching Hangover for the millionth time. The unrated version, which Mom and Dad say I can’t watch but I know by osmosis because Brian watches TV so freaking loud.
“Do you think the big spider here?” Ally says standing in the foyer with the biggest spider I’ve ever seen jimmied up next to the wall, kind of tucked in the corner. I laugh to myself seeing Ally, I mean, Katy Perry holding a gigantic spider.
“OMG. I love it. That fit in your backpack?” I say from the top of Dad’s ladder.
“Yup, I just blew it up and attached the legs.” Legs that look like boas. It’s the peacock of spiders. Made to be seen. So totally cool.
I unscrew the last regular bulb out of the hallway chandelier and screw in the last black light bulb. I wobble a little when I reach over to tighten it.
“No, it should go here,” I say, climbing down the ladder. I float the spider beside the front door so people confront it when they put their first foot in the door. I’m through with being tame.
“You sure? It’s kinda cool in the corner. And, it won’t get wet,” Ally says.
I turn my head and take a look outside. Blech. Rain. “Ok. How about here in the creepy corner.” I say creepy corner in my best Halloween voice.
“Creepy corner,” Ally says even creepier, shoving a few of the spider legs in my face.
We giggle and tie the spider up.
“Turn on the light,” Ally says, all excited.
I flip the switch.
“Check it out,” Ally says smiling, her teeth shine with a weird bluish glow and she nods in the spider’s direction. Its black parts blacker. Its white parts creepier, like they see right through me.
There’s a knock at the door. My stomach falls to my knees. We haven’t finished decorating and I haven’t even put on any makeup. Makeup is big. Because I never get to wear it to school and Halloween is the perfect time to start. The night I become a teenager. I don’t have any so Ally brought hers over. I guess makeup is pretty expensive. That’s why mom says I can’t wear it. Not until I can afford to buy it myself.
Ally wrinkles up her face when she peers through the peek-hole. “Relax, it’s just a bunch of kids,” she says. I look down the hall. No bros anywhere. Clueless. One in a Video Game Comma. One in a TV Comma. Maybe this is going to be easier than I think.
“Trick-or-treat,” the kids say with plenty of trick to it.
“Cute. Look, Roxie, it’s Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White,” Ally says.
Most fairy tales start with a dodo girl who turns into a peacock. Only there isn’t any specific fairy tale about exactly that. This is my moment. And the closest thing to a fairy tale I’ll ever know. Every peacock in the land is going to be here in an hour and, I still need a shower. My palms get all sweaty.
I hand Ally the plastic jack-o-lantern candy bucket and she takes out three pieces and puts one in each of the kids’ very cute, handmade orange sacks. One is decorated with a white, felt ghost; one with a big, black spider; and one with a black witch flying across a full moon. The bags don’t really go with the whole fairy-tale look. The bags were probably a Bluebird project. I know no one knows what Bluebirds are, but I was one. Before I became a Camp Fire Girl. Bluebirds earned beads which I think are cooler than badges and we didn’t sell cookies. My town of Oakdale wasn’t into Girl Scouts at all.
When Ally closes the front door the spider that we just hung up in the corner, kitty corner from the front door, is all wiggly and its legs kind of spread a little. It looks alive. My heart races and I jump, wondering why in the world I ever wanted to have this party in the first place, wondering why I need to be a peacock.
And while Ally and I watch the fairy tale princesses walk back to the street through the front door sidelight windows, I realize it really all came down to the fishing trip my dad and brothers went on. Mom and I stayed home because girls don’t do things like fish and camp, even if they really want to. I begged to go. Begged.
But the cabin was in Canada and Mom never liked Canada because Canada meant fishing and she never liked fishing and because she didn’t like Canada and fishing––she said the cabin wasn’t a proper cabin anyway and she always ended up doing the dishes and cleaning fish and something about they could do that themselves––she thought I wouldn’t like Canada and fishing either.
Anyway, my brothers came home with big smiles and a bunch of fish and even more stories about brushes with danger, all laughing and joking. They sprung “funny” jokes on me, ones I didn’t get, non-stop. And when I sat there with my mouth hanging open trying to piece together what my brothers were talking about, they called me Codamouchy Head. I’m not kidding. And no, Codamouchy Head doesn’t mean anything good. I think you can tell from reading it. I think you can tell that the name isn’t something you call someone that you like, even a little. And I knew that my brothers didn’t like me at all. The first time they called me Codamouchy Head. And so that was the beginning of me not being in a pack. I was in a family but I wasn’t in a pack.
And I really want to be in a pack. Because it’s one of the laws of nature that animals have a better chance of surviving if they have a pack. And I need a pack for high school. Heck, I need a pack in eighth grade. Because things are starting to get a little weird. You know, not like the normal stuff that kids do to each other. Now we’re are all wondering about big kid stuff, starting to do big-kid things.
I want to be a peacock because my parents always eat these soft-boiled eggs for breakfast. Honestly, I can’t watch. Yuck. And when I do watch them stick their spoons into the sticky, icky orange and white runny goo they slurp into their mouths it’s kind of, well, wild. And I get to thinking about wild things and eating things raw and what wild animals do. What’s in their nature. And I stare at the stainless steel cup holders that cradle the soft boiled eggs, which hold the eggs up on one end so Mom and Dad have an easier time cutting the top of the egg off with this weird steely slicer. The cutter and the stainless steeliness of everything makes me cringe.
The way they met was super proper. They met in the church choir. I’m forced to go to church but they don’t force me to sing in the choir, and as a little girl I used to think that the minute I sang in the church choir I’d meet the boy of my dreams. Even though I didn’t really spend much time thinking about him. He was sort of this fuzzy idea of perfection and I’d know him when I saw him. But as tame as their love story began, there was one thing about Mom that was very wild. Her belly dancing outfit.
It makes me think that she has a sparkly, wild streak. A whole side of her I’ll never know. And even though she and I don’t talk much and even though I might not be as smart as the daughter of her dreams, I know she’ll be there for me if I need her. I just know it. Because when she talks about me being born she never dwells on the fact that I came into this world at the ungodly hour of 3 AM, no, the only thing she says is that she was so excited she couldn’t sleep all night because she finally had a baby girl. It was one of the most exciting nights of her life. And it was the one time I knew that girls are special. At least to Mom.
I never really needed Mom to be there for me for anything major, but I know that if things get really bad and something so epic drives me to do something totally insane, well, I’ll go to Ally first, but then I’ll go to my mom, because she’ll always be there for me. Always. Even at 3 AM. Even though we don’t talk very much now.
In elementary school I’d go over to Ally’s house and her dad would say things in ways that I really understood. Different than my parents. He wasn’t a stainless-steely, soft egg eater. One time, way back in the third grade, Ally had trouble with some kids at school and a rumor they started. The peacocks thought her hair was fuzzy and wild and th
ey told everyone in the third grade, and I think the fourth grade too, not to go near Ally because she had lice. I didn’t believe them. I was the only friend who stood by Ally’s fuzzy, wild side and it wasn’t like that was the first time we became best friends but it’s one of those things that you can point to when you know your friendship’s even deeper, wilder, better than you ever thought.
That day, Mr. Bellisaros, Ally’s dad, saw that Ally had been crying when we walked home from school. She asked him what lice were. And I told him the story and he backed up a little bit. I’ll never forget how he backed up just a little bit like he was ready to rear up on his hind legs. Like wild animals do. Not in the super scary way like he was about to attack but in the concerned way like parents do, and he said, “Ally, its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog.” And I loved that he had said that because I understood it. It wasn’t about getting even or what she should have, could have, would have done to have averted humiliation. It was like, bad stuff happens and you can get through it if you have fight in you.
Dogs have it easy because girls can be the alpha and even if you are the omega chances are you live in a pack and that pack will help you when you need it. And so do wolves, for that matter, cause they’re really dogs. I spent my whole little girlhood afraid of them because my parents didn’t like them. They weren’t dog people is what Mr. Bellisaros, Ally’s dad, said when he tried to explain it away like it’s all OK. Like he did with everything. And I didn’t know what he meant by that but I think I kinda do now. There’s people who like warm fuzzy things around them and people who eat soft-boiled eggs out of stainless steel holders. It’s simple. Like dogs and wolves. There’s Alphas and Omegas.
Girls can be alphas. My parents don’t believe that either. But I do. I have to. Female lions hunt in prides. The girls do all the hunting. The boys would die without them. And I’m going to tell my parents that the next time they bring home paint swatches for The Boys Den. Because girls need dens too.
“Roxie? Roxie are you ok?” Ally is shaking me now.
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” The beady spider eyes stare down at me. Chills pour over me. In a matter of minutes, I’ll be having my first party. Evah.
“It’s like you’re in some weird trance. We’ve got to get you ready,” Ally says, sticking a few more extra-scary ghosts on the living room windows. Ally and I take the stairs up to my room three at a time and I slam right into Mitch’s chest. I have absolutely no idea when it happened but Mitch is buff. Like overnight.
“Damn.” Mitch says, clenching his right rib. “You’re strong for a Codamouchy Head.”
Really? He had to insult me in front of Ally. Then he backs up and gives Ally the once over with this weird look, like he’s hungry and in pain.
“Coda-what?” Ally says.
“Long, stupid story,” I say.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Mitch says noticing Ally. Acknowledging her. Speaking to her, which he’s never done ever before.
“Her name is Allyson, she’s only been my best friend forever, Mitch.”
“I’ve got to go,” Mitch says leaping off the top stair. When he lands, he shakes the house. “Brian, let’s go,” he says.
“Go where?” I don’t really care but I ask anyway. They’re leaving and that’s a good thing. I can’t wait for them to leave.
“A Codamouchy-free zone,” Mitch says eyeing Ally in that weird way again. I take Ally by the hand and we run down the hall to my room and slam the door behind us.
“Can you believe it?” I say.
“What?”
“They’re leaving. It’s perfect. I won’t have to worry about them screwing up my party.”
“Hey, how old is Mitch now?”
“He’s a senior.”
Senior just sort of hung in the air for a minute. One more year and he’ll be out of my life forever.
Ally walks to my full-length mirror. When I was little we used to play pretend in front of it. We would play like we were sisters––Ally has an older sister and two older brothers––and we’d pretend we weren’t regular sisters, we were fairy sisters and a big, bad fairy was after us wanting to destroy the most beautiful fairy sisters in all the land, which was us of course. And so we would sit on the floor and stare into the mirror. But we never had the look that Ally had right then. A wide-eyed one, sort of blank. Wondering.
Ally fixes her bangs, gives her super-short skirt a tug and stands sideways. You know a person long enough, you know what they’re thinking. I know she’s wondering why she ate so much at lunch. She always throws one-half of her sandwich away and today, she threw away more. I don’t really know what to say to Ally about it. I just sort of don’t say anything. We never thought we looked fat when we were little. But now, Ally stops and stares at mirrors and in front of store windows when we’re out and she always turns sideways.
“Come on,” I say. “They’ll be here any minute.”
“Where’s your summer clothes?” Ally says.
I pull out a big, zipped-up bag full of shorts and tank tops and swim suits. They smell like sunshine and Coppertone and flip-flops and cute lifeguards. Lifeguards I have a crush on, even though they’re the same age as Mitch, even older.
“This is perfect,” Ally picks out a golden halter-top and some yellow spandex-shorts and hands them to me. I slide them on and they hug my skin. I pull the sheer yellow, silky belly dancing pants over my shorts. And the fabric and the way it falls over my skin makes me feel delicate. Different. Pretty. The best part is when I slide the snake bracelet up over my elbow and it clings to my upper arm on my bare skin in a very grown-up way. I’ve never felt pretty or grown-up before.
“Now, makeup.” Ally says.
I sit in front of the magic mirror my grandpa gave me and want to watch Ally work her magic but she tells me to close my eyes.
“So it’s like this. The dark color always goes in the crease.” She brushes over my eyelid and it feels good and weird all at the same time. She’s got a soft touch but I blink like a maniac anyway. It kills me to keep my eyes shut. I want to see. “The highlight is the lightest shade and you always put that at your brow line.” She say’s brow line like she’s some great make-up artist. “Ok, open,” she says.
When I do, Ally’s dipping a brush into different colors and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, super into the whole eye-shadow thing.
And my eyes don’t look like my eyes anymore. But when it comes to the mascara she says, “Here, you do it. It’s hard for me to do it on you. Just remember slow and straight.”
I grab the wand, and try to work the brush over my lashes without poking out my eyeball. But I’m all over the place, and my hand slips. I paint a big, freakish black streak across my cheek mid-hiccup.
I hate, absolutely hate hiccups and if I have them when the party starts I’ll have to hide in the bathroom until they’re gone because I can’t let anyone hear the I sound I make when I hiccup. It’s not natural.
“Here,” Ally takes back the mascara brush and grabs a Q-tip out of her makeup bag. She uses it to swipe away the black smudges I made under my eyes. Then she dabs the cotton tip with water and pats the spot where I hiccupped my face black. She tells me to look up and my eye burns when she swipes under the bottom lashes with a pencil.
“Ta-DA!”
Wow. I don’t look like me.
“What do you think?”
I am a peacock. “I, uh,“ can’t speak.
“I like that jade eyeliner on you, it brings out your eyes. They look so, I don’t know, different,” Ally says.
“I know, right? Mom would die. Dad would keel over.”
“Well, they aren’t here are they?” Ally says, giving me a look like I’m a genius and proud of me for pulling off my first birthday party while my parents are away. “You do lip gloss and I’ll do my eye shadow.”
And then the doorbell rings. It rings again.
I can
’t move from the magic mirror. I always thought what a nightmare it would be to throw a party and have no one show up. That would be peacock-killing. Peacocks always have people come to their parties. And then I wonder why all those peacocks said yes. I have a hard time breathing. I can’t budge from my spot on the floor. Why do they all want to come? The makeup on my face melts a little more with every one of my heart beats.
“Earth to Roxie? Come on,” Ally says. She grabs my hand and we fly downstairs and stop so fast we almost trip and fall into the front door.
The bell rings again, this time it isn’t trick-or-treaters. I can tell from the wiggly windows we have on either side of the front door. Whoever-it-is are too big for trick-or-treaters.
“Do I look ok?” I ask Ally right after the bell rings again.
“You look great.” She smiles, proud of her handiwork.
Ally nods and bites her lip. I put my hand on the doorknob and open the door. In walks Adrianne and Hayden and their entire flock. All twelve of them.
Adrianne is everything I’m not. Cool. Blonde. All Skipper about everything. Super tall. Even though right then when they walk through my front door I can sort of tell that Hayden and I make a better couple. He’s the perfect height. I could wear heels and he’d still be taller. Our hair’s almost the same color, only his brown hair has this just-got-back-from-Florida shine to it. But, everyone knows peacocks only like peacocks.
“Nice spider,” Adrianne says, smiling at Ally.