Aubrey began spending all her time with Tyler, I couldn’t keep the stuff in the house. She even used to drink it with breakfast sometimes. In fact, now that I think about it, she had a can the morning she got heatstroke.
A week later, after she’d missed band camp entirely and set off on the first day of her senior year, there was something different about her. First of all, she’d worn a skirt. She’d never worn a skirt to school before. But it was more than that. There was something about her as she set off for the first day of her last year of high school; she was beautiful in such a defined and settled way. I saw that her beauty would age but never change again as it had when she was growing up. Had I told her how beautiful she was?
Yes, I had. I remember saying those exact words to her on the day she started her senior year.
AUGUST 19, 2009
I outline my eyes with a pencil call Smolder, then smudge most of it away. I brush on a blush called Orgasm, so that I look barely flushed. With every stroke of the lip liner pencil, every puff of blush, I imagine Tyler staring back. I realize that this is delusional, which is why it is so important that absolutely no one knows that I am trying. Not Tyler, not any of my old friends in band, not my mom.
Especially not my mom.
Thinking about her and her freakish CSI ability to analyze everything about me, from the way I am breathing to my tiniest facial twitch, makes me rub off most of the lip gloss and blush. If she knows it is all for a football player she will implode. It will be like one of those FLDS Mormon girls in the Little House on the Prairie dresses telling her mom she is crushed out on Snoop Dogg. Even making an effort for Parkhaven High would worry her. Which it does anyway, because, when I appear, she analyzes me for so long that I am certain she knows everything. I feel like she is X-raying me and all the bones of my skeleton are spelling out, “She likes a football player!” and “BONUS REVELATION: She’s thinking about betraying you by being Facebook friends with the ex who ruined your life!”
Then I feel her passing judgment and it is like being held underwater. So when she finally says, “Wow, pretty dressed up, aren’t you?” I am already sputtering for air.
“Why? Just because I’m wearing a skirt? In case you haven’t noticed, it’s like a thousand degrees out there and skirts are not as hot as jeans.” I know she is going to bust me on my “tone.” But if I don’t tone her a little bit, she is like that robot annihilator in Terminator 2. Run him over with a semi and all his quicksilver innards just slurp back together and keep coming at you. I am already too nervous to deal with that level of unstoppability.
“Sorry. You look nice is all.”
“Uh, it is the first day of school.”
“God, bite my head off. All I said is that you look nice.”
“And all I said was that it’s the first day of school.”
I cannot wait to get my own car. Not just so that I won’t be the only senior who doesn’t have one, but so I don’t have to start every single day of my life being laser-scanned to make sure I match someone’s standards. And, P.S., thanks, Mom. Way to destroy my confidence.
The entire first day of school, I feel like I am looking through a pair of binoculars turned around the wrong way so that everything is happening far, far away. All the people jamming the halls are like extras in a crowd scene as I search for Tyler’s face. The teachers introducing themselves and passing out their grading policy sheets and either trying to scare us or charm us seem like someone is making them play charades and they all want to lose.
After school, I find a spot in the shade at the very edge of the field where the band marches and right next to the adjacent field where the football team practices. The team hasn’t come out of the locker room yet, but most of the marching band is on the field, gathered around Mr. Shupe, who is passing out permission slips for trips.