Harmless Read online

  The first thing I needed, Mariah said, was to have my eye-brows waxed. I'd never seen this done in the department store, but apparently waxing was one of the specialties at Abby's Habit.

  “Why would I want to do that? Won't I look strange without eyebrows?”

  Mariah started laughing, but not in a mean way. She put her arm around my neck.

  “They don't take your eyebrows off, silly. They just give them some shape.”

  “I know,” I said. “I was joking.” This was so obviously not the case, but I think Mariah believed me.

  Clementine was the name of the tattooed girl who helped us, and I wondered if this was her real name or just a name she used at work because it sounded like one of Abby's Habit's signature colors. It hurt. Bad. But I didn't wince or cry. I looked in the mirror. I'd never noticed that my eyebrows had lacked shape, but they had. They were too bushy and messy. How could I have walked around all this time with eyebrows like that? Now I looked feminine. Sophisticated. I looked at least a year older and I hadn't even applied any makeup.

  My final bill came to almost sixty dollars. I wondered if my dad would freak out. He wasn't much for spending money. Even though everyone in Orsonville knew that the thin-crust pizzas from Giovanni's were far superior, he still insisted we order from Pizza Plaza because they were a few dollars cheaper. I looked in my bag. My sixty bucks had bought me some foun-dation, powder, blush, two brushes, mascara, four shades of eye shadow and three lipsticks. And the waxing. All in all it seemed like a decent deal. Especially when you compare it to what I spent on clothes at the Pyramid.

  We dropped Mariah off and waited in the car until she closed her front door behind her.

  “I guess it's good to be the boss,” said Mom as she checked out Mariah's huge house from behind the wheel of our Toyota.

  Dad didn't even blink about the charges. I offered to pay him back over the summer when I got a job. He gave me a meaningful look and smiled with his eyes in that way only my dad can, and he said, “I hope you enjoyed yourself. You de-serve it, kiddo.”

  I felt a quick jab, somewhere deep in my middle, when I heard Dad say those words: You deserve it. The bags felt heavy in my hands as I hauled them upstairs to my room. But when I put on one of my many new skirts and shirts and looked at my eyebrows and the makeup that Clementine had applied for me, I felt much better.

  In the morning I tried to make myself look like I did the night before. I tried to remember what Clementine had told me about blending the brown and silver eye shadow but I couldn't pull it off. I wanted to look my best at the assembly, and I soon realized that that required skipping the eye shadow altogether. I used the foundation, the powder, the blush, the mascara and what Mariah called my “daytime” lipstick. I wanted so badly to wear that new skirt and shirt, not my itchy wool ODS jumper and stupid white button-down. I was pretty sure it was against the dress code, but even so I put on this choker I'd bought with black and amber beads. I pulled my hair into a high ponytail.

  When I came downstairs for breakfast my mom studied me carefully.

  “You look gorgeous, honey.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But are you sure it's appropriate to wear makeup like that to school?”

  Mom didn't know anything about what was appropriate. If she'd known what was appropriate then maybe it wouldn't have taken me until late in my freshman year of high school to spend time on my appearance. She never wore makeup at all and she never let her hair out of that big nasty braid. Her eyebrows were a mess.

  “Yes, Mom,” I said. “It's fine. Everyone wears makeup. And anyway, I'm not even wearing any eye shadow.”

  “If you say so.” She sighed and patted the top of my head like I was a child.

  Emma met me out on the sidewalk and for the rest of the walk to school she didn't say a word about my new look. I know she noticed. I saw her notice. But for some reason she decided not to comment on the makeup. Or the choker. Or my eyebrows.

  “Are you ready for the assembly?” I asked.

  “I don't even know what that means. Ready? For what? It's just a stupid community safety assembly. A total waste of time.”

  I took a deep breath and felt hollow. I missed the old Emma.

  I decided to change the subject. “I went to the mall with Mariah last night. I got my eyebrows waxed and a bunch of new makeup and a whole mess of clothes. You should come over today so I can show them to you.”

  “I can't, Anna,” she said, and she looked up at the trees as if she were searching for the source of a sound. I listened. I couldn't hear a thing. She would look anywhere, it seemed, but at me. So we walked in silence. This wasn't unusual. There had been plenty of mornings over the past six years when we didn't speak much on our walk to school. But somehow this felt different.

  Maybe she was mad that Mariah and I had gone to the mall without her, that we didn't need her, that we could hang out and have a perfectly good time without having Emma around. Maybe she was still thinking about Owen and what happened or didn't happen on the couch—I couldn't even be sure anymore—and maybe she was wondering if she had a chance with him, if he might still want to be her boyfriend even though DJ and Mariah had broken up.

  I was thinking about Tobey. I was wondering if he'd notice my eyebrows.

  Finally we arrived at the entrance to the main building just as the bell for first period started ringing in its metallic, blaring, obnoxious way. That's how we know when we're late. I hate being late. But this morning, when I heard that eardrum-shattering ring, I felt relief. Relief that something, anything, was finally piercing the silence between us.

  Emma

  Special assemblies are always scheduled during third period. That meant no algebra for me, which was the only upside I could see to this whole disaster. I wanted this to stop. I wanted it to go away. I wanted it to disappear. I wanted to disappear.

  ODS assemblies are usually a little rowdy. Everyone sits on the gym bleachers and there's a semicircle of folding chairs around the microphone, where the headmaster and the deans sit facing the students. You can always count on one of the football players to shout out something inappropriate or at least fake a really loud farting noise just as someone is about to speak. On this morning, however, everyone sat perfectly still and quiet on the bleachers. I sat in the back, with Silas and Bronwyn, hidden among the seniors. Anna sat with Mariah down in the front row.

  Principal Glasser was sitting in the center of the semicircle surrounded by the deans and also Ms. Malachy, the school's crisis counselor. Glasser stood at the microphone looking out at us for a long time before he spoke. There were no inappropriate comments shouted from the audience. No fake farting sound. Finally, he launched into one of his typical way-too-long speeches about the dignified history of our esteemed institution.

  “And now our confidence has been compromised.” And on and on and on. He listed all the precautions the school was taking, how when we are at school it is the school's duty to keep us safe. In loco parentis, he said.

  Sitting in the back didn't keep anyone from staring at me. In fact, it made the stares more obvious as all the heads turned around, one after the other. I started trying to keep count, cate-gorizing them using grade and gender and popularity as a kind of classification system, but all the numbers and information started buzzing around in my head, making me feel faint.

  Suddenly, I saw the story from a new point of view. Anna and Mariah were heroes, two young girls with the presence of mind to grab a rock and strike back, while I was just the whim-pering victim who would have met an unimaginably terrible fate were it not for my two brave saviors.

  But wait a minute … I was the victim. It was me he grabbed. It was me he ordered to remove my clothes. It was me he planned to do something unthinkable to. Right? That was the story. And I was the victim.

  Darby O'Shea, the student body president, stood up from her seat next to Anna in the first row of the bleachers and approached the microphone. The sound of her shoes against the h
ardwood floor echoed off the far wall of the gym. Darby was probably the most popular girl in school, although Bron-wyn had been giving her a run for her money ever since she'd been dating Silas. Darby had thick black hair and blue eyes and a deep raspy voice. She'd been accepted early decision to Harvard, where her boyfriend, Clyde Pressman, was a sopho-more. Clyde himself was student body president at ODS two years ago.

  She unfolded a piece of yellow lined paper. She looked down at it, back at the semicircle of teachers and then at the students gathered on the bleachers. “Fellow Vikings,” she said. It struck me then how absurd it was to have a Viking as a mas-cot. Weren't Vikings rapists and pillagers? Why did we cele-brate Vikings? Was it just the funny hats?

  Darby continued, “What happened to these young women could have happened, and could still happen, to any of us gathered here. We are all so grateful that Anna and Emma and Mariah emerged from this nightmare unharmed.”

  So much for a generic assembly about community safety. Silas gave my knee a protective squeeze.

  “But now we must ask ourselves,” she went on, “what are we going to do about it?”

  “String him up by his balls!” someone shouted from the crowd.

  It was oddly comforting to me to hear this and the chuckling that followed it. I was relieved to see that the entire social order hadn't been disrupted: that football players could still be counted on to do what we expected of them.

  “Seriously,” said Darby. “I think we should organize some kind of schoolwide response to this event. I think we owe this to Anna and Emma and Mariah and we owe this to the greater Orsonville community, of which our school is an im-portant part.”

  Darby had never once addressed me by my name. I don't mean to say that she was a snob or anything, but she'd never looked at me or smiled at me or even said hello. She'd proba-bly known I was Silas's little sister, but she probably hadn't known my name and she certainly hadn't known Anna's. It may have been a different story with Mariah. Most of the senior girls lived in mortal fear that Mariah would poach one of the boys from their class, but Darby was probably above this, given that her boyfriend was some two hundred miles away. Anyway, it sounded strange to hear her use our names like we were all old friends.

  “I'd like to invite someone up here to address us about how we might help to capture this man who threatens our safety. Please welcome Detective Scott Stevens.”

  Now everyone applauded. How had I missed him in the crowd? He was sitting right there in the second row and when he stood up he looked almost like an exclamation point, his black uniform punctuating the sea of gray flannel. He smiled and nodded at Anna and Mariah as he made his way to the microphone. He'd had a haircut since we'd seen him last and this made his ears stick out even more.

  “Hi, everyone.”

  There was a mumble of “Hi” and “Hey” and “What's up?” from the crowd.

  “I'm just here to let you know what we know, which unfortunately is not very much, about who this attacker is and ask that if any of you has any information that you think might help us in our pursuit of this suspect, that you contact me or any of the officers down at the station. Also, I hope that after I let you know what little we know, you'll be extra vigilant both in the way you conduct yourselves and also in gathering information that might lead to his arrest. Most im-portantly: Keep your eyes open. Stay alert. Stick together.”

  Detective Stevens didn't think to readjust the microphone, so he was bent over it in a way that made him look awkward, but I could tell that everyone in the room was taking him seriously. I could only see Anna and Mariah from the back, but I could see that Mariah looked stiff and rigid. Her theory about the police just letting this go was looking kind of flimsy.

  When he was done giving his very vague description of the perpetrator (average this, average that), Principal Glasser thanked everyone for coming and said we should all hurry off to our fourth-period classes.

  I got up to leave. Detective Stevens was waiting for me as I came down from the back of the bleachers. He gave me a little wave and I stuck out my hand for him to shake and he took it in both of his and held it for a minute, and the tenderness of this act made my eyes fill with tears. He leaned over and said quietly, “Don't worry, Emma. I'm on this case and I don't give up easily.”

  Just as I reached the door of the gym I felt a hand on my shoulder, another gentle touch. This time it was Ms. Malachy. She told me she wanted me to come see her in her office. She said she thought I looked like I needed someone to talk to.

  Mariah

  Over dinner, a rubbery pot roast prepared by Constance, the woman who cleans our house and as far as I know has no real credentials in the kitchen, Mom asked me to tell her about the assembly.

  “It was fine.”

  “Just fine? Tell me more. What did they talk about?”

  “You know. Community safety.”

  Carl put his fork down, clenched his jaw and looked at me. “Don't be such a brat. Your mother is talking to you. Answer her.”

  “I did.”

  “Seriously, Mariah. I've had it with you and your attitude.”

  I managed to sneak a quick look at Jessica and I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue. She'd recently lost her two front teeth and she covered the gap in her grin with her little freckled hand. Then I turned back to Carl.

  “What do you want me to say? Principal Glasser talked about new rules on campus. We have to, like, sign in and sign out and stuff. And he was all ‘in loco parentis’ or some Latin thing for how the school is our family when we're there, and families look out for each other, which is a lot more than I can say for certain people at this table.”

  He smiled the smile of someone overly pleased with him-self. “Now, that is an answer. That is what your mother was looking for. See how easy putting together a real sentence can be?” Then his face darkened. The vein in his big bald forehead was pulsating. “Now, if only you were smart enough to quit while you were ahead. I won't be disrespected at my dinner table. You are excused.”

  I pushed my chair back and tried to think about how I'd gotten to this moment so that I could remember it and do it again. Not have to sit with Carl at dinner? Not have to eat Constance's disgusting pot roast? I'd won. Victory was mine.

  I went to my room and picked up the phone. I decided I should call Emma. She didn't sit with us at the assembly. I saw her afterwards and she really looked upset. I was pretty freaked out too when I saw Detective Stevens there, but I felt better after he talked because hearing him address the school rein-forced my first impression of him as a goofball who didn't really seem to know what he was doing. Darby O'Shea proba-bly asked him to be there and he knew he couldn't say no even though he had nothing valuable to say about the so-called investigation. I was going to tell Emma not to worry about Detective Scott Simpleton.

  Silas answered the phone. He sounded sleepy even though it was only eight-thirty. I could picture him lying on the couch in the basement watching TV or maybe throwing a basketball up in the air and catching it with his big strong hands.

  “Emma's not here. She and my mom are having a girls' night out, which I'm pretty sure involves dumplings and hot-and-sour soup.”

  “Oh. That sounds cool. So what about you? What are you doing?”

  “Just chilling. I'm staring at my books and willing them to impart wisdom to me without my having to actually open them and read them.”

  “Ah. Well, Silas, tonight is your lucky night. You happen to be on the phone with the master of the closed-book method of learning.”

  “Oh yeah?” I could hear him shifting his position. Maybe he was sitting up. Or maybe now he was lying down. “Tell me, wise master Mariah. How do you do it?”

  “By recognizing that learning is about so much more than what is written on those limited pages. I like to learn through life and its experiences.”

  “Aren't you, like, fourteen? What do you know about life experiences?”

  “More than you could probably guess
.”

  “Hmmm … Intriguing …”

  I felt a bolt of something hot and electric rush through me. Stop, I thought. Breathe. Stay calm.

  “Please,” he said. “Go on.”

  I talked to Silas for almost an hour and only hung up because my mom was at my door and wouldn't go away even though I was shooing her with dramatic pantomime motions. She wanted to talk to me about my behavior at the dinner table, and also, she'd snuck me up some rice pudding that made me rethink my earlier assessment of Constance's cooking credentials.

  She sat on my bed and yawned. “Jess was hard to get to sleep tonight. She's really excited about this birthday party she's been invited to on Saturday. She wouldn't stop talking about it. But I also suspect that she's bothered by what happened between you and Carl.”

  “Mom. Really. If you are up here to scold me for making Jessica's bedtime routine tougher on you, I don't think I can handle that.”

  “No, Pumpkin. That's not why I'm here. I just really want you and Carl to get along better.”

  “I'm not so sure it's all my fault.”

  “I'm not saying it is. I'm just asking that you make more of an effort.”

  “Honestly, Mom. He can be kind of a dick.”

  “Mariah …”

  “I mean, blaming me for what happened down by the river is pretty unfair, don't you think?”

  “He doesn't blame you. He just thinks you shouldn't have been there in the first place.”

  The strangest thing was happening to me. I was feeling something heavy in my chest and a tickle in the back of my throat and an itching behind my eyes. Even though this was all just a made-up story, I was bothered by Carl's reaction.Maybe even more so, I was bothered that I was bothered by Carl's reaction. Why did I care what he thought about me or about what had happened? I felt a tear rolling down my cheek and I didn't make a move to wipe it, hoping that Mom wouldn't notice it and would just say good night and get up and leave me alone in my room. But she's my mom and she reached over and caught it just at my cheekbone. She put her arms around me.