My Tiki Girl (23 page)

When I get back to my room, I find one of my mother’s cards from the box under my bed.

There is a watercolor scene of a stage with a heavy, red velvet curtain closed over it.

Break a leg,
it says. I’m not too stupid to get the irony, me being a limping girl and all.

I like the idea that you can hold back the forces of darkness by wishing someone the opposite of good luck.

Dear God, Dear Mother Mary, hear my prayer: Do not let us make total asses of ourselves tomorrow night. Please.

22

There are way
too many people here. We can barely get to the corner where all our equipment is set up. There are two kegs upstairs in the kitchen. Bottles of booze are set out on the counters. Cars are lined up and down the street.

It seems like half the school is here. I see pretty much the entire football team; Sukie and Heather with their crew of shiny, flawless girls; a handful of stoners in heavy-metal T-shirts and denim jackets; even the brainy girl with oversize glasses who sits in the front row of almost every one of my smart classes.

I’ve got the
Break a leg
card in the back pocket of my black jeans. Dahlia did our makeup, and she and I look like identical ghoul girls: pale foundation, wine-colored lipstick, heavy black eyeliner, and gray eyeshadow under our eyes that makes our faces look sunken and bruised. Dahlia’s got on her Dead Aunt Mary dress, all ripped up and safety-pinned together; black tights; and combat boots. I’ve got on my boots, jeans, and Paper Dolls T-shirt. Joey’s wearing his usual jeans, flannel shirt, and black watch cap. Troy’s got on ripped jeans and this Hawaiian shirt covered in hula dancers, which is a weird coincidence, considering that he knows nothing about the dolls or Tiki. But every time I look over and catch sight of the shirt, I have this feeling that he knows, not just about the dolls, but about
everything,
and that maybe he’s wearing the shirt to let us know we have no secrets. I whisper bits and pieces of this to Dahlia, but she says it’s just a shirt and that I’m being paranoid.

My palms are sweating, and I’m sure that I’ve forgotten every song we’re supposed to play, that I’ll get up there and start playing marching band music or something.

Troy picks up Purple Haze and hits the opening chords of “Dead Aunt Mary,” heavy on the reverb—thick and humming noise that seems to cut through the crowd and makes them all turn their heads our way. Dahlia grips the microphone, then she closes her eyes and begins to sing.

Just keep your eyes on me,
she told me earlier when I saw the crowd and said I didn’t think I could do it.
Pretend we’re the only two people in the world.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’ve got my eyes on Dahlia, and she is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. She’s a crazy singing angel, bruised and ragged in her torn dress, fallen from grace and trying to sing her way back.

When I play my clarinet, I play for her, to her, and imagine that we’re there on our beach, the neon word
memory
flashing behind us. And because it’s for her, I play perfectly. I don’t forget how the songs go. The notes carry me up and down, in and out; they are like waves threatening to pull me under, only to lift me to the surface again.

Dahlia’s singing, moaning, growling into the microphone, and the crowd is going apeshit. They love her. They love us. When Troy does his solo they nearly hit the roof.

Dahlia’s screaming that she’s got a knife in her heart, then she clutches at her chest and falls to the ground, moaning into the microphone as the song ends. She leaps back to her feet, soaking in the applause, a radiant jewel of a girl. My mermaid rock star Tiki. My secret love.

“We! Are! The Paper Dolls!” Dahlia shouts into the microphone in her raspy, rock ’n’ roll voice. Then we launch into “LaSamba Blues,” and I’m wailing away on my clarinet in a way that would make even Artie Shaw proud. All the eyes in the room are on me, giving me this familiar feeling that’s a total rush. It’s the star-of-the-school-play-coming-out-to-do-a-curtain-call feeling. Here, on the makeshift stage in Troy’s basement, the ghost of my old self is tapping me on the shoulder, saying,
Welcome back.

Dahlia comes up and puts her arm around me as she sings, and I’m just floating now. With each new round of applause, I feel that old popular-girl self-confidence rising inside me and it feels good, like deep heat on sore muscles.

I can do this. I can play music in front of all these people. I can go onstage at Terrapins and rock the house with my crazy clarinet playing.

Who says a skinny girl with a limp can’t be a star?

We go through the whole set smoothly, getting more relaxed, more in tune with one another as we go. Joey’s taken off his flannel shirt, and he’s got this crazy grin as he drums. Troy’s rocking out, letting his long hair fly as he jumps up and down with his purple guitar. I look out at the crowd and see that Sukie and Heather are actually bopping along with the music, smiling like they can’t help it.

All too soon, we’re at the last song, the one about mermaids. Dahlia does this crazy thing at the part of the song about how she’s drowning in love—she kisses me on the cheek. There, in front of all the kids from our school, in front of the John Lennon- looking guy from Terrapins, she actually kisses me. And people applaud.

I glance over at Troy, who’s jamming away on his guitar and looking at us kind of strangely, like maybe he’s just now figured out who the song is for, and my heart is exploding. I have never been happier.

Chaos. Triumphant jubilation. I want to remember this night forever. Dahlia and I are stars.

Phil, the guy from Terrapins, is all over Dahlia, asking her all about herself, promising that he can sign The Paper Dolls up to play the all-ages show next week. He wants to know if we have more material, can do a longer set, and Dahlia tells him we’re working on it. Troy’s getting pats on the back from all his football buddies. Even Joey is basking in attention. He’s got a bunch of kids asking him all about his drum. And me, well, Sukie has just spilled beer on me while giving me a hug. She was talking with Troy in the corner, just gushing over him while he leaned in to whisper into her ear. Then she came right over to me. She’s patting at my wet shirt, saying something, but I can’t make it out between all the shouting and the Jimi Hendrix that Troy just cranked up on the stereo.

“Come on!” she shouts, and I follow her through the crowd, up the stairs, and down the hall to Troy’s bedroom, where she shuts the door.

“God, I’m so sorry about your shirt!” she says, touching my damp chest. I pull away.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her.

“You were so great tonight!” she says, her voice all chipper. “I mean it.” She fluffs her big bouncy hair with a violent nod that sends her staggering. She swigs what’s left of her beer. The girl is trashed. She can barely stand.

“Thanks,” I mumble.

“It was like the old Maggie was back.”

I don’t respond, even though I know exactly what she means.

“I mean,” she goes on, “except for your crazy new look. The old Maggie would never have gone for that.”

“What is this,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
or something?” I ask.

This gets a laugh.

“Could be,” she says. “That would explain a lot.”

“Like what?”

“Like what happened to you. I mean, yes, I know your mom died, Maggie.” She gets right in my face to say this, her smell a combination of stale beer and lip gloss. “And I know you miss her. God, I miss her, too.” She totters backward and I’m afraid she’ll fall. I reach out and grab her arm, steadying her. “But I also miss you,” she says. “It’s like you died with her that night. Like your soul was sucked away into some void and left you walking around like a zombie or something.”

“Frankenstein girl,” I say.

“What?”

“Never mind. Look, I’ve gotta get back to the party.” I let go of her arm. She sways, but stays upright.

“To
her,
you mean,” Sukie says.

“Her?”

“Just tell me something before you go, huh? What is it about Dahlia freaking Wainwright?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“What has she got that I don’t, Mags?”

I don’t have a clue how to answer.

“Is it this?” she asks, then steps forward and kisses me. Actually kisses me
on the mouth
! And she keeps her lips there, opens her mouth, goes in with her tongue. I jerk away, totally freaked.

“Is this how you are now?” she asks, her voice shaking. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Is this what I need to do to get you back? To even get you to have a freaking conversation with me?”

“No, I . . .” I shake my head, take a step back. I knew that Sukie wanted the old me back, I just had no idea that she was this desperate.

When did my life turn into one insane twist after another? Maybe I could join one of those Believe It or Not freak shows at the fair.

Come see the boy with three arms, the dog who can sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the limping Frankenstein girl who was just kissed by her ex-best friend, the most popular girl in tenth grade.

“I saw you and Dahlia making out in the woods behind the school a couple weeks ago,” Sukie says.

“We were smoking pot, that’s all.”

It’s not a lie, because that really is all we were doing that day.

“So you’re gonna deny you and Dahlia are having some kind of hot and heavy thing. Come on, Mags. I’m not half the idiot you seem to think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot. I’m telling you, we were just smoking pot when you saw us. Dahlia was blowing on the lit end of the joint while I took a hit. It wasn’t a kiss. It might have looked like one, but it wasn’t. I swear.”

We’re interrupted by a quick rap on the door, then Heather sticks her head in and sighs with relief when her eyes fall on Sukie.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she says.

I just bet she has.

“I’m talking to Maggie,” Sukie tells her.

“Well, yeah, I can see that,” Heather says, and comes into the room.

“Privately,”
Sukie says, and I swear, if Heather could shoot laser beams from her eyes, Sukie and I would both be dead right now.

“Okay, well, I’ll be downstairs,” Heather tells her, and she backs out of the room, keeping her eyes on us like it’s a dangerous situation—like I’ve got a gun hidden in my pocket pointed at Sukie to force her to talk to me.

“So what’s up with your clone there?” I ask once Heather’s closed the door.

“My clone? That’s cute, Mags.”

“It’s not cute, really. Mostly it’s just sort of depressing.”

“Oh, and your friendship with Dahlia isn’t?”

“No,” I tell her. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“Jesus, Sukie!”

“Well, are you?”

“Why does it matter so damn much?”

“Are you in love with her?”

“God! Yes,
all right
? Yes, I am in love with Dahlia. We’re in a thing. What else do you want to know? Want to know if I’m a dyke? If I was one back when we were friends? I don’t know, Sukie. Could be I was and just didn’t know it. Is that mind-blowing enough for you? To think maybe your best friend who you slept beside and shared ice cream with was some sick lesbian pervert all along?”

“I just wish you would have told me,” she says.

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“We were best friends,” she says.

“Yeah, we were.”

As I say these words, it really hits me that my friendship with Sukie is totally over. I mean, I knew it before, but I was never really sad over it. I think I had too much other grief to deal with. But we’d been best friends since first grade. We’d once shared everything together. Now here we were, practically strangers.

I look over at Troy’s desk and see the Magic 8 Ball there and remember her once asking it, “Will Mags and I be best friends forever?” and shaking it, then reading, “Signs point to yes.”

Now Sukie drops her empty plastic cup into the wastebasket and turns to go—which, suddenly, I don’t want her to do. I want to explain the whole thing, tell her why I couldn’t call her back all those times last year, why I pulled away, how I never meant for things to turn out the way they did.

“I have the wand,” I tell her.

“What?”

Her back is still to me, her hand on the doorknob.

“The Glinda wand. I found it at the intersection.”

“Poof,” is all she says, and then she just stands there for a second like she’s waiting. Waiting for me to say that I take it all back—everything that’s happened since the accident, that I want to be best friends again and just forget everything else, including Dahlia.

I touch my beer-soaked shirt and hold my breath as Sukie walks out of the room.

23

We’re back at
Dahlia’s now after the party, and the confession box stands abandoned in the corner of the living room. It’s two in the morning and Leah and Jonah are in bed. Dahlia and I have scrubbed the makeup off our faces, but we’re still walking on air, talking about the band, telling each other again and again how great we were tonight. Dahlia’s talking about the gig she arranged at Terrapins, how it can be an ongoing thing if we bring in a crowd. I haven’t said a word about Sukie and what happened in Troy’s bedroom earlier. It’s just too weird, and I don’t want to wreck the mood by bringing it up.