Danielle sits up, a little dizzy. Drops of sweat drip down the sides of her face. And as the crowd parts, she sees a couple of the football boys hanging around near the weight-room door.
One of them is Andrew.
Chuck laughs hysterically. “Dude. Does Dan the Man do that to you?” When Andrew doesn’t say anything, Chuck turns to the rest of the guys and chides, “I bet that’s their foreplay. She lifts Andrew up and benches him a few times.”
Andrew stands terribly still, his forehead wrinkled and pinched. He looks pissed. But she can’t tell whether he’s upset at Chuck for saying those jerky things or at her for provoking them.
Chuck punches Andrew’s arm. “Hey! Good thing Dan’s not trying out for football. You’d be back down on JV. She’d definitely beat you out for tight end.”
Danielle wants to stand up, to walk away from the door, but she can’t move. She can’t even wipe the drops of sweat rolling down the sides of her face, curling under her chin.
“Shut up,” Andrew says. But his voice is drowned out by his friends’ teasing.
“Move along, gentlemen,” Coach Tracy says. “Stop distracting my swimmers.” She closes the weight-room door on them.
Danielle, her chest still heaving, her muscles so sore, watches Andrew turn and leave.
should have gotten a salad,” Lisa says, frowning down at her plate.
Bridget is sitting across from her sister at the pizza shop in the mall. She picked the table near the window, even though it was dirty and she had to clear someone else’s plates away, so she could distract herself from the food by watching the shoppers avoid the man at the kiosk flying his rubber-band airplanes.
“Don’t be stupid, Lisa. You love the pizza here. So … eat it and then let’s go.” Bridget stabs at a piece of wilted lettuce in the side salad she felt compelled to order so as not to be suspicious. As hungry as she is right now, it is wholly unappetizing.
Wasn’t that the point? Really, she is angry for quitting the cleanse. If she hadn’t quit the cleanse, she wouldn’t have been starving, and if she hadn’t been starving, she wouldn’t have screwed up so badly today.
Lisa shakes her head. “I shouldn’t eat like this. Especially because I’m not playing sports. I’m going to blow up.”
Bridget sets down her plastic fork and eyes Lisa suspiciously. “Where’s all this coming from?” She wonders if maybe Abby mentioned seeing her in the bathroom. She hadn’t been able to throw up, though she’d wanted to. What luck, to have been caught in her weakest moment. Having dragged herself to the vending machines for some pretzels. Pretzels, for heaven’s sake. Not nuts, not a pack of Life Savers.
Lisa shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not upset or anything that Abby got prettiest. She totally deserves it. But it would be nice if maybe next year, I could get it.”
“God, is that what you’re worried about?” Bridget says. “You’ve got Dad’s genes. He can’t gain weight. I’m the one who has to worry, with Mom’s side of the family. And anyway, one piece of pizza isn’t going to make a difference.”
“You never eat pizza anymore,” Lisa accuses.
Bridget stabs her fork into the Styrofoam bowl. She doesn’t even want to be in this pizza shop. But Lisa had insisted. And now she’s going to complain?
“Here,” Bridget snaps, and grabs Lisa’s plate.
Take a bite.
Take a big bite.
That’ll shut her up.
Instead, she reaches for napkins from the dispenser. “If you’re that concerned about it, do this.” Bridget lays a few napkins on the cheese, and taps them gently with her fingertips. They bloom bright orange. “This saves you, like, a hundred calories. I mean, you could peel the cheese off and just eat the bread.” Bridget does exactly that, lifting the cheese off in one layer and dropping it on the side of the plate in a heap.
“But the cheese is the best part!” Lisa whines.
Bridget ignores her. She grabs another napkin and wipes off the sauce. “This is so bad for you, by the way. Full of sugar.” Finally, Bridget tears off the crust. “And skip the crust. It’ll just sit in your gut.”
Lisa takes back her dissected slice — a pale piece of soggy bread — and frowns. “Gee, thanks.”
Bridget can feel the oil on her fingertips. She wants to lick them, lick them clean. Instead, she takes another napkin and wipes them so vigorously, the paper tears. She feels guilty for bringing her sister into her shit, and for ruining a perfectly good piece of pizza. She can’t wait until this stupid dance is over, until she can go back to being a normal person again. “I’ll buy you another slice, okay? I just wanted to show you how stupid you’re being.”
“It’s fine,” Lisa says quietly. “I know you’re only trying to help me.” She eats the heap of cheese on the side of the plate and then says, “We can go now.”
Bridget takes a deep breath, and then rustles her hand through Lisa’s hair as they stand up. She would explain herself, but she just wants to get out of the pizza parlor.
Half an hour later, they are in the department store. Bridget sees the homecoming dress she wants right away. A little red strapless one. It’s so pretty and feminine. As she circles the mannequin, she notices that the dress is folded and pinned in the back to make it even tighter. She starts thinking of those pretzels, imagines those pins popping out, ripping the fabric to make room for her.
“That is going to look SO good on you,” Lisa says, and hugs her from behind.
“I don’t know.”
Lisa bounces off to another rack. “Try it on!”
Bridget pushes dresses along the rack. She picks her size, the same size as the summer bikini, and holds it up. It looks like so much fabric, so wide. A red circus tent. And she probably won’t even fit into it.
In the dressing room, she frowns at the mirror. She is able to get the dress on and zipped up. She should be happy. She’s lost the weight she’d put back on since leaving the beach. Plus, the red looks nice with her dark hair. But her hips jut out and ruin the silhouette. Her tummy, too. A little pouch in the very front of her, like a kangaroo. Even her knees are fat.
“I feel so bad for Abby,” Lisa is saying from the next dressing room. “I mean, she’s probably not going to be able to go to the dance now. All because of Fern.”
“That sucks,” Bridget says after a few seconds. She wants to cry, looking at herself in the dress.
If only you were a size smaller.
Bridget thinks about the bikini. How it was a goal. Because she’d bought it, she’d had to achieve it.
With two days to go until the dance, if she bought another size down, could she do it?
“Can I see?” Lisa asks.
“I’m already dressed. Just meet me at the register.”
As Lisa gets her clothes back on, Bridget runs out to the floor and grabs the red dress in a smaller size. She’ll test herself one more time.
t is a sickness, one that’s entirely infected her. There’s no difference between the grime and Sarah’s skin. It’s fused together.
Her alarm goes off, but Sarah doesn’t open her eyes because she doesn’t want to feel the squeeze of dirt in the folds of her eyelids.
She slept naked last night. Really, she didn’t sleep at all. Just lay there and itched.
Her clothes are in a damp pile on the floor. She cheats and puts her underwear on inside out. It barely helps. It takes everything tough inside her to put the rest of them on.
The whole bike ride to school, she imagines a conversation between Milo and Annie about the fight she’d had with him yesterday in the hall. Annie would tell Milo to stay away from Sarah. That she sounds deranged. Milo would tell Annie that he misses her. That he wishes he’d never had to move away.
As if to confirm her worst suspicions, Milo isn’t waiting for her on the bench.
At least it’s cold out. The chill makes her skin contract, tighten up, and burn numb, almost to where she can’t feel herself. She sits on the bench and waits, froze
n in filth, until the second bell rings, until she is officially late.
Milo never shows up.
Friday is 10,000 percent the opposite of Monday. No one ignores her. They can’t. Now all her classmates look at her in sheer horror. Sarah falls into her homeroom seat. There is the squeak of chair legs and desk legs as those sitting close to her try to move away. Even the shunning can’t penetrate the filth. It is body armor. Underneath it, she feels nothing.
With every step, the slightest movement or shift, her smell escapes. A scent sour and raw and sharp. The boys pull their shirt collars up over their noses. The girls press perfumed wrists against their faces.
It is beautiful.
Except she can tell they never expected anything less disgusting from her. There’s no shock, no awe. Just a sense of destiny.
anielle stands in the doorway of the pool office with one hand clutching her shoulder. “Coach Tracy?” She squeezes the words through her teeth.
Coach Tracy spins around in her chair, looking immediately concerned. “Danielle. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in your bathing suit?”
“I think I hurt my arm yesterday in the weight room. I must have done too many lifts.” Danielle startles as Coach Tracy rises to her feet. “I — I shouldn’t have tried to show off. I’m thinking I’d better not get in the water today. You know. As a precaution for tomorrow’s meet.”
Coach Tracy presses a thumb gently into Danielle’s shoulder muscle. Danielle sucks in a sharp breath on cue.
“This is a problem. You need to practice with your team so you get the timing down for the meet tomorrow. We still haven’t worked on your flip turns.” Coach Tracy presses a couple of other places down Danielle’s arm. Danielle winces as she thinks she should. “I’m going to have to bring another swimmer up to fill your spot.”
“I’m sure it will be better tomorrow, Coach Tracy. I swear. And I’ll sit in on practice, so I won’t miss anything. I just don’t want to aggravate it. I really think I just need a day off from swimming, and it’ll feel better.”
Coach Tracy continues to prod her shoulder, but her touch feels different than it had moments before. It is less diagnostic and more playacting. “If you think that’s what you need, I guess I can’t argue with you. But I can’t take the chance that you’ll be better tomorrow.”
Danielle is in pain as she walks out of the pool office. Except the hurt is in her chest and not her shoulder. It has been there all day. She can’t get into the water today. Not when she’d spent so much time fixing her hair this morning. Not when she has plans for after practice, when she absolutely has to look her best.
Danielle takes a seat on the bleachers. She watches the rest of the varsity team dive into the water, along with Hope, whom Coach Tracy picks as her replacement.
About two hours later, Danielle sits in the locker room, waiting for Hope to get changed.
“Are you sure you still want to get pizza?” Hope asks. “Maybe you should go home and rest your shoulder.”
Danielle folds up Hope’s wet towel. “Pizza’s not going to hurt my shoulder, Hope.”
“But what if Coach Tracy sees you out with the guys? She might never let you swim varsity.”
Danielle notices that the way Hope sometimes speaks makes her sound not like a best friend but like a little sister. And Hope sort of looks like a little sister, too, with her baggy sweatpants, shapeless T-shirt, and hooded sweatshirt tied around her waist. Her hair is up in a floppy bun, half-dried from her after-practice shower. Hope has really pretty hair, when she bothers to blow it out. Danielle thinks about suggesting that she should. But she doesn’t want to keep Andrew and his friends waiting. And anyway, it isn’t like Hope has something to prove to them.
“What could Coach Tracy possibly say? I have to eat dinner. It’s not a big deal.” And then, because maybe she’s come off a bit harsh, Danielle adds, “I’m glad you’re coming with me.”
Bringing Hope along had been Andrew’s idea.
He hadn’t called her after the weight room incident, hadn’t answered her texts. Probably, she figured, because he was worried about how angry she might be for the way he’d acted.
But the thing was, Danielle wasn’t calling to yell at him. She had wanted to share the news that she was now a varsity swimmer. Okay, maybe it wasn’t homecoming court, and it didn’t have anything to do with whether she was pretty or ugly, but it was something Danielle knew Andrew and even his idiot friends could respect.
But more than respect, she wanted Andrew to be proud of her again. Proud to be with her.
So that morning, she’d woken up early and taken extra time getting ready. She’d used conditioner on her hair, and made the mental note that she should use it more often. She put on makeup and traded her T-shirt bra for one with padding. And finally, she put on the one sundress she’d packed for Camp Clover Lake, the one Andrew had once said made the boys in his bunk go crazy. It was too cold for cotton that thin, so Danielle paired it with a cardigan sweater and a pair of leggings.
And then she’d waited for Andrew at his locker before homeroom.
“Hey,” he said, sounding tired.
“Guess what,” she said, popping up on her toes. “I have news.”
She waited for him to look at her. Andrew dug through his locker for his books. He used the door to hide his face.
And suddenly, the pride from her accomplishment twisted into something needy. “Your parents are still gone, right? Because I was thinking after school, I could come over again.” She still wasn’t sure how she felt about what they’d done on Wednesday, but here she was, ready to do that and more.
“Actually, a couple guys are going to grab pizza after practice,” he said.
“Oh.” It amazed her how much desperation could fit into a single syllable. “Where? Mimeo’s or Tripoli’s?”
“Probably Tripoli’s. I don’t know.”
“I love Tripoli’s. It’s the best pizza in town.” Andrew closed his locker door, and Danielle found herself practically standing on top of him. “I was actually thinking about having pizza tonight, too, which is weird.”
“Do you … want to go?”
“Do you want me to go?”
He shrugged. “Why would I care if you ate pizza or not?”
“Well, then I’ll go.” It wasn’t exactly the invitation she’d hoped for, but she knew that if she and Andrew were going to work, she was going to have to find a way to get along with his friends. It wasn’t just about making Andrew see her as pretty. It was as important that Chuck and the rest of the guys saw her that way, too.
“Well, you should probably invite Hope to come, so you’re not the only girl. It might be weird for you otherwise. And that way, you’ll have someone else to talk to.”
“Isn’t that your job? You know, as my boyfriend?” He gave her a look, and Danielle backed off. She didn’t want him to rescind the invitation he’d barely extended. “Okay. I’ll bring Hope. We’ll meet you at the corner after practice.”
Danielle and Hope wait for twenty minutes at the corner, keeping an eye out for Coach Tracy’s Jeep. When Andrew and his friends don’t show, Danielle wonders if his practice is running late. The two girls walk over to the field.
It’s empty.
Hope sighs. “I thought you said Andrew —”
“He must have forgotten. He’s so focused on the homecoming game. It’s all he talks about.”
Hope doesn’t say anything more on the five-block walk to Main Street, but Danielle is still annoyed with her. Already Hope is failing at her purpose: to make things less awkward for Danielle.
Danielle sees a break in the traffic and darts across the street. She knows Hope is behind her. A car honks, but Danielle doesn’t stop. She has her eyes on Tripoli’s Pizza.
The boys are inside. Andrew, Chuck, and a bunch of others. Two pizza trays have been cleared, save for three slices and a pile of uneaten crusts. The guys are being rowdy, laughing about something. But they quiet when Danielle wa
lks through the door, Hope following at her heels.
Danielle goes right up to the table.
Chuck says, “Dan the Man!”
“My name is Danielle.”
Chuck looks wide-eyed at the other boys. “Sorry, Danielle. Anyway, it’s nice to see you, dude!”
The other boys laugh. But not Andrew. He stares down at the table.
“I thought you were meeting us at the corner,” she whispers.
Andrew scratches at the cheese stuck to his paper plate. “Right. Sorry. The guys practically carried me here after practice. They were starving. Plus, coach let us off early.”
The other boys have their heads down, too, so she can’t tell if Andrew is lying or not. And just as Danielle notices that none of the guys move to make room for her or Hope, she feels a hand touch her shoulder. “Here,” Hope says, guiding Danielle backward. “I got us a table.”
Danielle is shaking. She’s never been so embarrassed. But what could she have expected? She practically forced Andrew to invite her along. If only she could go back in time and save face. There will be no easy exit now. She’ll have to play it cool, or risk completely humiliating herself.
Danielle goes up to the counter and orders herself and Hope a slice and a soda each. When she sits back down, the boys’ conversation is going again. She chews as quietly as she can and listens from her table.
“I don’t care what those senior girls say. There’s no way in hell I’m voting for Jennifer Briggis for homecoming queen,” Chuck says. “It makes a mockery of everything. Any girl who gets picked ugliest in her class has no right to win. Point-blank.” Danielle can feel Chuck’s eyes on her, but she can’t bring herself to meet his gaze. “And have you smelled that dirtbag Sarah Singer? It’s like all the ugly girls in school are banding together to ruin homecoming!” Chuck sucks down the last of his soda, squeezes his hand around the can, and pushes the crumpled aluminum toward Andrew. “In other shitty news, I heard that Abby can’t go to your homecoming party, bro. She’s grounded.”