Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,30
up and rolling the desk chair in front of the full-length mirror on the back of my closet door.
Grace shrugs, a quick jerk of her shoulders. “I don’t need them.”
That is . . . some magical thinking if ever I’ve heard it. “Gracie,” I say, struggling not to laugh, “you’re basically straight-up blind without your glasses. You’re going to be walking into walls like Mr. Magoo.”
Grace flops down into the chair, sighing loudly in the direction of the hallway. “Well if Mom would just let me get contacts, that wouldn’t matter.”
“Why does it matter, huh?” I ask, frowning a little as I reach down to plug the flat iron into the wall. “Where are you even going?”
“Just to the movies with some people in my class.”
“Some people . . . ,” I echo, scooping my own hair out of my face and sensing there’s more to the story here. “Any person in particular?”
Gracie tilts her head back, her long brown hair reaching almost to the carpet. “I mean, there’s a boy,” she admits grudgingly. “But it’s not a big deal.”
“Oh yeah?” I gather up her hair in both hands, raking through the tangles and betting on the fact that she’ll say more if and only if I act like I’m not curious. “Grab me that claw clip, will you?”
Sure enough: “His name is Louis,” she continues, handing it over; I divide her hair into sections as I wait for the iron to heat up. “And he’s so cute. And when we talk in Spanish I think he likes me—like, he’s always laughing at my jokes and stuff—but he’s popular.” She screws her face up in the mirror, or maybe she’s just squinting to try to see herself. “And just, with the glasses, and the chess—”
“You love chess!” I blurt, unable to help it. “And you’re fucking amazing at it, so—”
“That’s not the point!” Grace interrupts. “The other girls in my class . . .” She trails off. “They have boobs, and one of them has eyelash extensions. And I basically still look like a little kid.”
You are a little kid, I think immediately, but at least I know better than to say it out loud. I gaze at Gracie in the mirror, her clear skin and straight eyebrows, the scar on the edge of her mouth from the time she took a header off her skateboard when she was seven. I want to tell her that Opal Cosare was the first person to get boobs in my class and the boys made her life a living hell over it. I want to tell her that getting older isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. But I don’t want to scare her off.
I’m quiet for a moment, clamping her hair in the flat iron and pulling gently. Chloe taught me this trick, I think with a tiny pang behind my rib cage, patiently doing it for me until I figured it out for myself.
“Anybody who doesn’t think you’re adorable in your glasses isn’t worth it anyway,” I say finally, flicking my wrist to make a perfect fashion-blogger wave.
“You have to say that,” Gracie retorts, rolling her eyes. “It’s like, in the big-sister constitution. Next thing you’ll be telling me is I’m perfect just the way I am.”
“I mean, you are perfect the way you are,” I tell her. “But it’s not like I didn’t go through this exact thing in eighth grade. Remember when I begged Mom to let me get a belly button ring before that pool party at Tamar Harris’s house?”
“Oh my god, I forgot about that,” Grace says, grinning goofily. “You kept threatening to do it yourself with a sewing needle.”
“I don’t even think there are any sewing needles in our house,” I say with a laugh. “Like, when was the last time you saw Mom sew something? But I just thought that belly button ring was the key to my glamorous teenage life or something, I don’t even know.” I remember the run-up to that party with a kind of visceral embarrassment—the girl who searched high and low for the perfect two-piece and attempted to contour a six-pack onto her stomach with makeup, wanting to prove how chill and fun and sexy she was on the eve of her middle school graduation—and at the same time I wish I could go back and protect her.
“Anyway,” I say now, tilting Grace’s head to the side to get to the section of hair behind her ear, “if you honestly