FOURTEEN

THE BAD GIRLS’ CLUB

Well. That didn’t work out.

Miriam sits outside the principal’s office with a handful of flimsy brown paper towels wadded up around her collar. All of them, sodden. In her pocket, an as-yet-unopened package of pink hair dye.

Her scalp burns. Especially around the bullet-dug skin-ditch.

She figured, fuck it, I can dye my hair in one of the girls’ restrooms. Who cares, right? She went in, wandered around for a while, found a bathroom. Started killing the old chestnut color with a bleach wash, and while she was in there, she shared a couple smokes with some of the older girls who came in. One of them was a nice black girl named Sharise, the other her gawky white friend Bella.

They smoked. Talked about the hell of high school. Good times.

But then—po-po came rolling in. Five-oh. Someone must have seen her wandering the halls and called the front desk, and before she knew what was happening, she was being escorted here by a pair of security guards. One guy who looked like a hyper-roided authority machine with a shorn scalp and muscles ill contained by his guard uniform. The other guy looking like the Italian plumber from that video game. But shorter. And a little fatter.

And now the principal’s office. Or just outside it. Facing a wall with wooden wainscoting. Brass sconces. Dullsville. Boredopolis. Yawnworld.

Next to her is some red-haired little twat with a smear of freckles across the bridge of her nose, sitting there with her smug arms folded over a bunched-up navy blazer hugged tight against her chest. The girl smells faintly of cigarettes. Different brand from what Miriam smokes.

Wait.

Miriam gets another look at her.

“You’re that girl.”

The girl scowls. Sneers. Eyebrow arched. “What?”

“The girl. With the sketchbook. And the—” Miriam mimics the slap-down move. “Blammo.”

“Oh. Yeah. She said my leaf looked like dog butt.”

“Did it?”

“Mostly. But that’s no reason to be rude. A lot of the world looks like dog butt. Doesn’t mean you should go around saying so.”

Miriam shrugs. “I dunno. That’s how I treat life.”

“Your breath is rank.”

“And that’s obviously how you treat life, too. Yeah, I know my breath is rank. I just drank tequila.”

“Out of a Porta-Potty toilet?”

“Cute. That’d be the bleach you’re smelling.”

“This isn’t a hair salon, you know.”

“My God,” said Miriam, “you are such a little See-You-Next-Tuesday.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Spell it out.”

The girl does. “Oh. I get it. Cunt.” The girl rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, missy. And you shouldn’t say that word.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“I’m not your mom.”

“I know that. I’m not a moron. Did you think that for a moment, I actually believed you were my mother?” She thrusts her tongue into the pocket of her cheek with a bulge, looks Miriam up and down. “You’re old enough to be my mom, though.”

“I am not, you little fucking jerk. I’m only in my mid-twenties.”

She shrugs. “So is my mom.”

“You’re what, thirteen?”

“Twelve.” She sees Miriam looking at her. “Yeah, my mom was fifteen when I was born. And since I’m not a total tardcart, I can do the math, and that means she’s twenty-seven. See? Mid-twenties.”

“Late twenties,” Miriam corrects. “And even then, it’s not like she’s some old-ass hausfrau. Respect your elders. Or something.”

“I would, but she’s gone.”

“Gone. Like, poof, evaporated into nothing? Gone like dead? What?”

“Like, left me alone in her studio apartment a year ago to go off and see the world. Or shoot heroin. Because she really likes heroin.”

“So she kind of sucks, then.”

“Kind of.”

“My mother was the opposite,” Miriam says. She tries to picture her mother’s face. It’s hard. The face swims in a cloud of features—noses and eyes and cheeks and skin palettes. Some drift into place before floating away again, rejected. “Prim and proper. Had me locked down pretty good. That woman probably could’ve used a little heroin. Loosen her up a bit.”

“My mom could’ve used more prim and proper.”

“We could trade moms.”

“Deal.”

The girl offers her hand.

Miriam stares at it like it’s covered in spiders.

The door to the office opens— and Miriam notes that it says “Headmaster,” not “Principal.” A small man with slicked-back black hair, two dark cherry-pit eyes, and a navy blazer pokes his head out.

“Miss Lauren Martin,” the headmaster says, his voice long and drawn out and creaky like an old door. “Nice to see you again. We will attend to you shortly. First, I must meet with Miss . . .”

He looks at Miriam, expectant.

“Black,” she says. She thought about lying, but fuck it.

“Good. Miss Black, if you care to . . .” He steps back from his door.

The girl—Lauren—looks up at her. Hand still out.

“Do we have a deal?” she asks Miriam. “To trade moms.”

Miriam knows she shouldn’t touch the hand. What’s the point? Just as she’s starting to like this girl, she’s going to fast-forward to the girl’s demise, however it goes. Drunk-driving accident at age eighteen or a head-cracking slip in the shower at age eighty-one?

And yet there’s that urge, that familiar urge, the tingle in the tips of her fingers and the damp creases of her palm, and she reaches in and hesitates suddenly, the way an airplane hovers above the landing strip before setting down on the tarmac and then—

She takes her hand and sees how the girl is going to die.