Invisible Girl (20 page)

“We both knew we were together,” he says.

“And how would we both know that?” I say, enjoying being contrary. “How could we be ‘together’ when you never asked me out?” I learned this last bit of social protocol from listening to Annie and her friends. Apparently the way it plays is this: a guy and a girl can hook up and still not be “going out”; a girl can go to a specific location with a guy, like to a movie or something and still not be “going out.” “Going out” is a state of mind of mutual understanding and is accomplished only when the guy actually says, “Will you go out with me?” and the girl says, “Yes.”

“Okay, then,” Andrew says. “Will you go out with me?”

I look straight at him. I know I should say no. I know I have the perfect opportunity to walk away after a cold, smartaleck, witchy comment, but I’m suddenly thinking about my mother, coming into my room while I’m freshly bruised and crying from being hit and meekly holding out her brush.
Stephanie, may I brush your hair?

Each time, even though I vowed I would never talk to her again, I’d fold. Within minutes, I’d break and let her stand behind me and run the brush through my hair, a caress against my scalp, even as my swollen eyes and red, puffy face looked back at me in the mirror.

“I’ll think about it,” I say, wobbly.

“Can I help persuade you?” he says. He leans forward and kisses me, light as a whisper, yet sending a blowtorch scorching throughout my entire body. Without thinking, I kiss him back, falling back into the tunnel, just like I always did with my mother.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Annie’s in a fury on Saturday morning. Andrew and I ran smack into Leslie as we were making our way back across the front lawn last night, and he had his arm around me. We were barely even parallel to her when she had her cell phone out, the quickest draw in the West, already frantically texting.

Now Annie is in the unenviable position of having me, an apparent enemy, both living in her home and going out with a key guy in her group. I can tell that despite the, no doubt, endless analysis with her advisers, she hasn’t decided what to do.

She leaves for cheerleading practice, neither snubbing me nor saying good-bye. Until she makes an official decision, she’s trying to keep her options open.

I know I should call my father this morning and make a new demand to be sent home. But even though I have Annie as an enemy and feel acute discomfort whenever Uncle Michael walks into the room and runs his eyes over me, searching for any visible hints of something I have stolen, I secretly want to stay now.

I not only have a friend—I have a boyfriend.

I am like one of those kids from Ethiopia, with a starved and weirdly extended belly, who finally found food and is feasting, feasting, feasting, with no end in sight.

I don’t call my dad and hope that he doesn’t call me. For once, I am grateful for his pathetic passivity. I don’t even have to shove down any feelings of rage for him this morning. I vaguely feel sorry for his lack of control over his own life. I take a minute and just let all feelings about him run up my spine and float, like smoke, out the top of my head. There’s not much room for all the bad stuff inside me anymore.

Aunt Sarah’s in the kitchen when I come down. It’s not nearly as hard to be around her as Uncle Michael because she seems used to being pushed around by stronger-willed people who always get things their way. The inconvenience of my remaining presence is almost like just another pain-in-the-butt thing on her plate, like having to pick up the dry cleaning, or drop Annie and her friends off shopping when she’d really rather be playing tennis.

I eat a quick yogurt and ask her for permission to use Annie’s old bike. She says yes automatically and doesn’t even ask me where I’m going. I don’t know what she’s heard about my scarlet dress last night, but since she’s the one who provided it, it’s hardly anything she can complain about.

In half an hour I’m riding the bike past the club and up Amal’s driveway. Her house is tall and white with fancy columns, like it was built by one of the guys who built stuff in ancient Greece or Rome. I walk to the front door and ring the bell. The door swings open and Amal stands there looking pretty and excited.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she says.

I step into a dark green marble foyer. A beautiful thick rug of deep blues and reds lies in the middle of the marble. The marble looks cool; the rug looks warm. I want to take my shoes off and put one foot on the marble and one on the rug so I’ll have the experience of cool and warm at the same time. Like drinking hot chocolate at an ice rink, only softer.

“Want something to eat?” Amal says, and we walk off the rug and into the hallway. My tennis shoes squeak. Amal’s sandals flap. We’re both dressed in shorts and T-shirts, and even though her family obviously has a ton of money, her outfit is not super cute or special, like the things Annie wears.

We walk a couple more steps and then I stop. On our right is a room with wall-to-wall bookshelves that stretch from the floor to a high gilded ceiling. Sliding ladders of burnished wood grace every wall. Thousands of books glimmer in hard covers of maroon, green and black, marked with gold foreign writing in delicate squiggles that I know without asking is Arabic.

I don’t even remember Amal is next to me as I float into the room as slowly as Alice in Wonderland. My feet tiptoe on soft carpets as I spin around. The shelves rustle with the hidden whispers of millions of words. I walk forward and touch the bindings of the gold-lettered books. My hands hum with their secrets.

I turn to my right and see a marble fireplace with a huge tapestry above it showing millions of people walking toward a building of five pillars.

“That’s Mecca,” Amal’s voice breaks in, and I’m startled to remember I’m a guest in someone’s house and I probably should have asked before just walking into the library without permission.

“This is mostly my dad’s room. He used to be a professor before he switched to working for a company.”

“It’s a beautiful room,” I say, still in awe, then suddenly shy and nervous, thinking that she must have a really smart dad and what if he doesn’t like me?

She looks pleased with my approval of the room. We hear quick, energetic footsteps and she says, “Oh, there’s my dad.”

Blood rushes to my face. Did I brush my teeth after I ate that yogurt? Should I have worn lip gloss at least? I haven’t met the parents of a friend since my social life ended that time Karen Fratenelli and Maggie Hogan’s parents found my mom drunk after that sleepover.

I turn slowly. It’s much brighter in the hall than in the library. Amal’s dad stands at the edge of the dim room surrounded by light. He is darker than Amal, with short, curly black and gray hair that grows tight to his head. His hairline is high so his forehead is extra big. His eyebrows are thick and bushy. They run straight across without any arch.

Intelligence sparks off of him, kindling in the jewel-colored bindings of his books. I want him to like me, but not like I wanted Uncle Michael to like me, as if I were Nancy Drew. For the first time, I am standing before an adult, where I want him to like the “me” deep inside. The me that’s not my mother but a girl who likes books the way he obviously does. I’d love to be able to have a real conversation with him about reading, but I have no idea how to make that happen, so I just stand there.

I realize that he’s been wiping little oval gold glasses on his shirt and that maybe he hasn’t even seen me yet. He puts on the glasses. “You must be Stephanie,” he says and comes over and kisses me on both cheeks.

I hope I don’t blow the pronunciation of his name. “Hi, Mr. al Ghamrawi,” I say.

He speaks in a foreign accent, like a Middle Eastern accent, not a southern one. He doesn’t say, “Call me Kareem,” which Amal told me is his first name, like the other Californian dads would do. He just seems strong and comfortable standing there, like it’s okay that he’s a dad and he doesn’t have to tell her friends to call him by his first name to be a good guy.

Amal grabs my arm and I follow. We hurry down the hall and into a kitchen that’s bright with soft yellow walls and golden granite on the counters. A woman fusses in the sink. Her back is toward us. “Mama,” Amal says.

The woman turns. Her face is beautiful and eager like Amal’s, but instead of being easy and open like her daughter’s, it’s complicated and layered. Like each phase in her life left her with a gentle crust of special wisdom and if you just dug deep enough, you could pierce through her entire life’s story.

She smiles, giving me another moment to search her face. Underneath her surface layer of eagerness is a wariness, and underneath the wariness is, in some inexplicable way, boldness and defiance. She dries her hands on a towel and says warmly, “Welcome, Stephanie.”

I smile before I realize I’m smiling.

She walks toward me, holds out her arms and embraces me in a big hug.

The first thing I feel is the soft cloth of her shirt. Behind the shirt are large breasts that mush in against me. Her arms are thick and solid. Her body is a meadow, and I breathe her in so hard, I’m lightheaded.

She steps back from me, keeping her hands on my shoulders and smiling down on me. I smile back, trying not to remember that last hug I had with my own mother, when I felt the sharp cut of her chain belt against my cheek, when I clutched at her, begging her not to leave and heard the wasps buzzing inside her.

I let the memory rise out of the top of my head like steam, just like I did with the thoughts of my father this morning. I am already lighter from not working so hard to stuff things down again.

“Come and eat,” Amal’s mother says. Amal and I swing our butts down onto a built-in bench that is part of a bay window with a little table in it. Mrs. G. puts down bowls of what Amal says is
belila,
a wheat-berry cereal that’s sort of like oatmeal with milk and raisins and cinnamon.

My nose swallows the scent. I know it’s not polite to openly sniff food so I do it secretly, acting like I have an itch on my nose. I scratch my forehead with my left hand while I put the spoon under my nostrils with my right. The smell is now a hug inside me.

Amal’s mother sits down right across from me. “So, Stephanie, are you going to be staying in Los Angeles long? Or going back to Boston?”

I feel a weird excitement that I obviously have been the topic of discussion between Amal and her mother. I don’t even think how I should answer her before I just spit out honestly, “It’s hard to say. I don’t think my dad really knows what to do with me right now.”

A quick look passes between Amal and her mother. I’m in shock that I said what I said. The old Stephanie would have kept up her fierce protection without even thinking. I’m torn between my old self and my new.

Too soon, too soon, too soon.

Anxiety leaps up my throat. I’m furious that I was blinded by the cinnamon and the hug. I can’t possibly expose the dirt of my neediness to someone like her. She can’t know I’m an unloved kid. She just can’t.

I need to tell her how much my mother worries about me and concerns herself with my future. I quickly calculate that even though Annie told me “everyone knows the truth” about me, Amal is out of the way of anyone’s texting traffic. I just can’t let her mother know how pathetic I am.

“My mother’s away on business right now,” I blurt. “She really wanted me to spend some time in L.A. so I could start thinking about colleges and checking them out—like maybe Stanford or something.”

Slight confusion dots Amal’s mother’s face. Fear sucks in my stomach. I’m frozen in a moment of elusive information and afraid I might just have erred. I go over snapshots of dialogue. Aunt Sarah did say that Michael Jr. went to Stanford, right? And it was in California, wasn’t it?

I try desperately to remember conversations from Annie’s dinner table. My cheeks burn hotly when I recall that Michael took a
plane
back to school, which means Stanford couldn’t be in L.A.

I can cover this. “My mom thought that even though Stanford isn’t in L.A., if I went there, I might come here for weekends, just for fun.”

I’m talking faster than usual, and my voice is higher. “My mom was going to come out here with me so we could visit colleges together, just the two of us. She knows a lot of presidents of universities and stuff, because of her work on charities. But, right before I left, someone who works for her, on a big charity party, got sick, and well, you know, she had to stay and take care of business.” I’m absolutely rambling now, my liar’s words sputtering out fast and poisonous.

Amal’s mom leans forward. “What kind of charity work does she do?”

I look at her hard to see if she has a sarcastic half smile like my mom would wear whenever she called my dad “Senator.” She just looks normal and interested. I take another bite of my
belila
to buy time to answer and notice that her skin is lighter than my and Amal’s skin and that she has three freckles in a triangle on her forearm.

I keep staring at her arm, chewing slowly and thinking frantically. “She counsels people with prosthetic limbs,” I blurt. “And, ah, skin grafts after fires.”

I look up quickly to see if I’m exposed. Why did I say something so stupid? I suddenly can think of a million charities, like heart attack stuff, diabetes, cancer. Why didn’t I say one of those?

She just nods, even more interested, and places a soft hand on mine. “I think I would like your mother very much,” she says quietly.

I blink fast, holding back tears, because I just lied to this wonderful person, which means I’m still just the old Stephanie, covering up my dirty rotten core with fables of greatness.