My Life in Black and White (2 page)

My mother had other opinions. “There’s a difference between a house and a home, Alexa,” she said the first time she picked me up at Taylor’s. Then, “Money can’t buy happiness, you know.” She seemed to believe what she spouted. There wasn’t a speck of jealousy on her face when she saw the size of the rock on Taylor’s mom’s finger or the apple-red Porsche in the driveway. The car, as well as the forty-two-foot schooner docked at the Millbridge Yacht Club, belonged to Taylor’s dad, a TV sportscaster who worked in Manhattan. “
Your
daddy is a public servant,” my mother loved to remind me. “A public defender.”

“I know, Mama,” I said every time.

“He
helps
people for a living, Alexa.”

“I know.”

But all this was beside the point to my elementary-school self: me being pretty, Taylor being rich, whatever our parents thought of each other. From the second we met, Tay and I were best friends, and that was all that mattered. We wore matching bracelets. We spoke in code. We loved the same things (Hannah Montana, peppermint-stick ice cream, the color green—
kelly
green, not hunter or lime). We joined Girl Scouts together. We slept at each other’s houses. We talked on the phone ad nauseam. We were, in a word, inseparable.

There was one other girl we played with, Heidi Engle. She was Taylor’s oldest friend because Mrs. Engle and Mrs. LeFevre had been childhood BFFs. “We have no choice,” Taylor told me once. “We’re forced to play together.” But the truth was that Heidi worshipped Taylor. She had to be ticked when I came along and she got demoted to third wheel. Oh, she hid it well enough. Heidi was nice to my face, but I could tell from the minute I met her that she secretly wished my dad would get fired and we would move back to Virginia.

I remember in seventh grade, when Heidi and our new friend Kendall were planning their joint thirteenth birthday party, which would take place in Kendall’s basement rec room and would consist mostly of Cool Ranch Doritos and spin the bottle. I said something like, “I’ll eat, but I’m not kissing anyone.”

“Oh, great,” Heidi said, throwing both hands in the air. “We might as well not even
have
a party.” She glared at me, then shared her theory that none of the boys would come to the party if there weren’t at least a
chance
of making out with me. She called my reluctance to play spin the bottle “downright selfish” and said if I were really their friend I would “suck it up.”

I turned to Taylor for support. She shrugged one pale, freckled shoulder. “Heids does have a point, Lex. Even if she’s being obnoxious about it. Loyalty to the girls.”

Kendall, and her best friend, Rae, nodded in agreement.

“Fine,” I said, not wanting to be a party pooper.

The whole thing was a disaster. First off, the boys were jerks. By definition, seventh-grade boys are thoughtless and immature. Playing kissing games with them just proves the point. There’s nothing romantic about it, even if you’re the one they all want to kiss.
Especially
if you’re the one they all want to kiss. I spent half the party in a closet getting felt up and the other half in the bathroom bawling because Heidi called me a slut and Taylor did nothing to defend me.

Later, when I recapped the story for my sister, Ruthie, she had no sympathy for my plight. Not a drop.

“You know, Lex,” she said, frowning up at me from whichever tomb-sized book she was reading at the time, “you need different friends. Those girls are wenches.”

For about a nanosecond, I believed Ruthie. I trusted my straight-A, honor-student big sister, who was smarter than I would ever be. But then I considered her
X-Files
sweatshirt. And the mustache of zits across her upper lip. And the trombone case propped against the edge of her desk. And I knew that she was jealous, pure and simple. Jealous of everything I had that she didn’t. Like Taylor. And Kendall and Rae, who, because they’d gone to the other elementary school, we had only started hanging out with the summer before junior high when their moms began playing tennis with Taylor’s mom. The four of us—Kendall and Rae, me and Taylor—were the only girls in seventh grade who ever got invited to ninth-grade parties. Which was more than I could say for my sister.

I felt bad for Ruthie, whose friends were not remotely cool. I’m sorry, but it’s a fact. You cannot play the accordion (Sasha) or wear a purple cape to school (Beatrice) and expect to be invited anywhere. But it wasn’t my fault Ruthie turned out the way she did. If my sister wanted someone to blame, it should be our dad, who gave her his beak nose and woolly eyebrows. He also stuck her with the name Ruth, after some great aunt we never met. (Incidentally, I was supposed to be named Harriet after his cousin, but I was born by C-section and came out so perfect my mother made him change his mind. She named me Alexa after the actress on the cover of that month’s
Redbook
, which she happened to be reading when her water broke.)

Anyway, I told Ruthie she was wrong. My friends weren’t wenches; they were just upset at the party—understandably—because the boys were being tools. First, Jason Saccovitch called Heidi a porker. Then, Kyle Humboldt said Taylor was so flat you could bounce a quarter off her chest.

“Whatever,” Ruthie said, shrugging. She wasn’t convinced, but I knew I was right. I thought about the look on Taylor’s face when Kyle made his crack, and how Kendall dumped a whole liter of Coke on his head for payback. Which is what friends do for each other. Which Ruthie wouldn’t understand. Sasha and Beatrice never even
talked
to a boy, let alone dumped Coke on him.

That’s when it hit me:
I
was the bad friend for not defending Taylor to Kyle. If I had told Kyle off instead of just standing there, Taylor would have told Heidi off for calling me a slut. Quid pro quo, as my dad would say.

So the next morning, I apologized to Tay. And she apologized to me. We cried, we hugged, and our friendship resumed stronger than ever. The two of us coasted through the rest of seventh grade. Then eighth. Then—with the exception of one tiny hiccup of a fight when Ryan Dano and I started going out—we rocked our last year of junior high together. The irony is, when the town first rezoned the schools, making ninth grade part of the junior high instead of the high school, we were mad. But ninth was the best. We ran that place. Taylor and Lexi, the Dynamic Duo. Cocaptains of the field hockey team; rulers of the center table in the caf; chairs of the yearbook committee, ensuring plenty of photo representation for us and our inner circle. The day after graduation, Taylor’s mom, who was mad at Taylor’s dad and needed to punish him, threw a lobster bake for our whole class. Tay wore a cherry-red halter dress with a slit up one leg, and silver, strappy sandals. It was her best outfit ever.

Over the summer, I practically lived at the LeFevres’. My parents needed to do the college-tour thing with Ruthie, and Taylor’s parents said I was welcome anytime. Which turned out great because Tay’s dad was always working and her mom was always shopping, so we had the house to ourselves.

Most days Taylor and I would hang out by the pool in her backyard, drinking Crystal Light and working on our tans. Sometimes Heidi, Kendall, and Rae would join us. On July Fourth, Taylor’s brother, Jarrod, invited a bunch of his varsity football buddies over. I wasn’t a big fan of Jarrod—who was loud and hairy and always stripping off his shirt in front of me like I was supposed to be impressed—but Taylor adored him. She also had a massive crush on one of Jarrod’s friends, Rob. And on that particular afternoon, Taylor happened to notice Rob noticing
me
in my bathing suit, and she got all weird about it. I told her not to worry: A) I was in love with Ryan; and B) I wasn’t the least bit attracted to Rob.

I remember the look on Taylor’s face—the slight flush of her freckled cheeks and the furrow between her pale, almost nonexistent eyebrows. “I can’t compete with you, Lexi.”

“Who said we were competing?”

She shrugged, then eyed my plain, blue Speedo tank suit—the only thing my mother would let me buy.
It’s a classic, Alexa. It will never go out of style.

“
You’re
the one in the two-piece,” I said to Taylor, “from Barney’s, no less.” Which, while true, missed the point. The point was that Taylor still had the same body she’d had since kindergarten: tiddlywink chest; slender hips; knobby knees. No coral-colored Brazilian string bikini in the world was going to change that. Just as no amount of mother-approved Lycra was going hide my boobs. They were here to stay.

“You look great,” I told Taylor.

“Whatever,” she muttered.

“You
do
. And you know what else? One of these days, Rob is going to notice how hot you are and he’s going to rip that bikini off with his teeth.”

This time, Taylor smiled. Having Jarrod for a brother, she knew all about high school boys and their pervy ways. One time when Jarrod was at football practice, Tay and I snuck into his room and browsed his computer history. There were pictures of things I’d never seen in my life—not even in
The Joy of Sex
, which my parents kept hidden under their mattress. I was glad that my gorgeous but well-mannered boyfriend wasn’t into that stuff. For the six months we’d been dating, Ryan was perfectly content with my clothes-on hookup policy. Why wouldn’t he be? We were in love. Madly and deeply.

Okay, I know how stupid that sounds now. But at the time, I honestly believed I had it all. Looks, friendship, true love. I honestly believed I led a charmed existence.

And then, halfway through the summer, Taylor’s brother, Jarrod, had a party, and in a single night two things happened that would change the course of my life forever:

My best friend betrayed me.

And my face went through a windshield.

It’s Not What You Think

MY LIFE IS OVER.

It’s the kind of pronouncement teenage girls make every day. They say it after such traumatic events as, say, farting out loud in gym class, or discovering they’ve gained three pounds at Christmas and can’t fit in their winter formal dress.
Oh my God, you guys! My life is over!
Then they bawl to their girlfriends, eat a bunch of Oreos, and move on.

But this was different. I wasn’t saying the words for effect; I meant them. Because when you’re fifteen years old and you’re lying in a hospital bed listening to things like “multiple facial fractures” and “reconstructive surgery,” there is only one coherent thought in your mind:
my life is over.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” said the nurse who was checking my blood pressure the morning after the accident.

No,
I thought, trying to shake my head but it hurt too much to move,
I’m not
.

I couldn’t expect some stranger in Mickey Mouse scrubs to understand. But the truth was, what happened to my face wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part—the reason I was in the hospital at all—was Taylor.

It should have been a perfect night. The first Saturday in August, and Mr. and Mrs. LeFevre were both away for the weekend (him, golf tournament; her, spa), leaving Taylor’s brother, Jarrod, in charge. Which, of course, meant throwing a midsummer blowout. Tay and I were thrilled, because what better way to kick off our high school career than to party with a bunch of seniors? I may not have liked Jarrod, but his status as varsity football captain, and my status as his sister’s best friend, had their advantages. Taylor even suggested I invite Ryan, who, although he hadn’t tried out yet, was hoping to make varsity instead of JV and could only benefit from meeting Jarrod.

“You’re the best,” I said to Taylor when we were up in her bedroom getting ready.

“I try,” she said.

I felt a wave of love for my best friend. Not only was she looking out for me, she was looking out for my boyfriend, too. Taylor was the kind of person you could count on. The kind of friend who would loan you her best vintage tee—the new one that she hadn’t even worn yet. Who assured you that the blue mascara you put on wasn’t bogus; it made your eyes pop.

As the two of us walked out into the hall, she grabbed my hand. “How do I look?”

I studied her kelly-green halter and matching miniskirt. “Awesome,” I said. Then I asked if she was sure I should wear the jeans. Wouldn’t I be too hot? It was August, after all. What about the shorts I had on earlier?

Taylor shrugged. “The jeans look good.” She hiked up the waistband of her skirt another inch.

“Okay…” I said. “Thanks.”

Then the two of us headed downstairs to the kitchen, where Jarrod and a dozen of his football buddies were already standing around a keg, red plastic cups in hand.

“Well, well, well,” one of them said. He smirked at us from under his baseball cap. “What have we here?”

Another punched Jarrod’s arm. “Where are your manners, LeFevre? The ladies are thirsty.”

Jarrod filled two cups: one for Taylor, one for me. I shook my head and smiled, a gracious refusal, but Taylor gave me her puppy-dog look.
Please?
her eyes said.
Pleeeeaaaase?