“Ithought you were going to ask your sister to hem this?” Lucy’s voice was shaky, verging on hysterical, as she paused on the top step to Scott Boyd’s apartment. She held fistfuls of red fabric in her hands, and her clenched knuckles were white. The glittery red dress that had once been Elena’s sister’s trailed behind her.
“I did.” Elena watched Lucy tug at the bodice of the borrowed dress. “Marguerite said she altered it for a shorter person.”
Lucy looked up her expression souring. Marguerite, like every other woman in Elena’s extended Brazilian family, was lean and long-legged. Lucy was so petite, she could have been a card-carrying member of the Lollipop Guild.
“How much shorter?”
Elena busied herself with pushing the doorbell. Zach’s voice floated down from the speaker.
“It’s us,” Lucy called. “Let us in.”
The buzzer made them all jump, but Elena recovered quickly and grasped the door handle, pulling it open. Lucy and Meg scurried inside.
“How much shorter?” Lucy asked again when they were all huddled in the dark, cramped hallway. It was warm, and for that Meg was grateful, though the heat seemed to amplify unpleasant smells that seeped up from the stained, worn hallway carpet.
“I dunno,” Elena answered Lucy with a shrug. “Shorter. What are you, like, five six?”
“I’m five one.”
They walked down the tiny hall, maneuvering around piles of moldy pizza boxes. A new mountain bike was leaning against one wall. It was so nice Meg wondered why it hadn’t been stolen.
Elena peeled off her puffy winter coat and revealed her outfit. Lucy and Meg exchanged a look, and Lucy sighed. Elena looked crisp and elegant in tight black shorts and a sparkly gold halter. Her shoulders were bronze and sprinkled with glitter. Her costume was supposed to be Roller Girl from the movie Boogie Nights, and though she’d gotten the wavy, feathered hairdo right, she was missing the required roller skates. When Meg pointed this out to her, Elena had just stared back at her, her beautiful eyes wide and confused.
Lucy let go of the dress, and it fell around her feet in a shimmery red pool. The red grew darker as it sucked up liquid from an overturned beer bottle. “I look ridiculous. I don’t look anything like Jessica Rabbit. This was such a stupid idea. Halloween is for morons.”
Meg loved Halloween. It was the only time of year when you could, officially anyway, transform yourself into someone else. She’d always wanted to attend a real costume party so she could dress up as Holly Golightly, her favorite movie heroine.
Lucy wouldn’t show up at just any Halloween party. It had to be at the right place, with the right sort of attendees. Meg was at the bus stop, watching poor Zach fawning all over Lucy when the idea suddenly came to her. Somehow Zach ended up thinking it was his idea to host this wild bash, which of course would be parentless, involve alcohol, and be held at his cousin Scott’s apartment.
If Meg had known the apartment was such a dump, she might have suggested a different venue. A dark hollow underneath a highway overpass, maybe, or a function room at the Pine Street Inn.
“You look great,” she told Lucy and reached over to adjust the bust of Lucy’s dress, which, even with a generously padded bra, was way too loose. Lucy had wanted to vamp it up as some sort of sexy undead creature, all in black and torn lace, but Meg had convinced her, with some effort, to glam it up instead. “Crazy sexy.”
“Don’t lie to me, Meg.” Lucy pouted and pushed a strand of her red wig away. “I hate it when people lie to me.”
Meg felt a sharp pang of guilt. She’d wanted Elena, in her over-the-top porn star costume, to look silly. Lucy had the confidence to pull off a glamorous, seductive costume. Unfortunately, she just didn’t have the figure for it.
“Should we leave?” asked Elena. “We can go back to my house and give out candy to all the cute, little trick or treaters.” She peeled off a flyer that had gotten stuck to the bottom of her shoe. “Order Chinese?”
“No,” Meg insisted. She finally, finally, was out with Lucy and Elena. She was included in their group. They were heading to a real party. It was like she was suddenly inside one of her favorite teen comedies.
Elena’s suggestion sounded too much like what Meg’s Halloween had been like last year when she’d been alone and friendless. Plus, it would be nearly impossible to resist Chinese food.
“We’ve been planning this all week. We look great.” She avoided looking at Lucy. The dress had been an enormous mistake. She was swimming in it. “Besides, everyone is going to be dressed up and silly.”
They walked up the stairs in silence. Elena reached up and knocked on the door. Meg held her breath. Zach must have been standing behind it, waiting, because the door swung open before Elena could even lower her hand.
“Ladies!” he sang, then bowed and swept out his arm, gesturing them inside.
Lucy was still struggling with her dress when she stepped across the threshold. Elena looked back at Lucy, and then quickly turned to Meg, her hand covering her mouth. Lucy just stared, her dark eyebrows creeping closer together.
The small apartment was empty.
Thriller was blaring from one of the back bedrooms, and a torn cotton spider web was stretched, crookedly, from one corner of the living room to another. It was the only holiday decoration. One boy, in boxer shorts and an old, stained, t-shirt, was sprawled out on the floor in front of the television, a video game controller in hand. Flynn, the Ironic Mullet himself, was curled up in an armchair.
None of the boys wore costumes.
“You outdid yourself, Zach,” Lucy said. Elena and Meg exchanged a rare conspiratorial look and backed away from her.
“Sorry about the decorations,” Zach whispered. “This is all Scott would let me do. He really wasn’t into the idea of a party. He hates costumes.”
“Of course he does,” Lucy said, depositing her heavy coat in his arms. She motioned for Elena and Meg to do the same. “Is it just costumes or all clothes in general?” she asked the blonde boy on the floor.
Meg stepped around Elena, eager to get a better view of the infamous Scott Boyd.
Whenever Lucy and Elena discussed a boy, whether it was a celebrity or a cute boy at the bus station, they always determined his swoon-worthiness by using their patented “Scott Boyd” scale.
“He’s ok, but he’s no Scott Boyd.”
“He’s about half a Scott Boyd.”
“He doesn’t even deserve to breathe the same air as Scott Boyd.”
Meg was very excited to meet Scott Boyd, and see a perfect male specimen up close and in person. He was cute. That much had been true. He had carefully tousled hair and a swoon-worthy dimpled chin. That was enough to make any girl weak in the knees until they looked closer. And Meg always looked closer. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, and he wasn’t smiling.
“Oh, the hoodsies are here. Great,” Scott said, without much enthusiasm. He turned his head, showing off his sculpted profile, and took a long drag from the stubby joint in his hand.
Lucy put a hand on her bony little hip. “Yes, and you’re lounging around, half-naked, in front of underage girls. That’s a felony waiting to happen.”
“Is that a threat or a request?” Scott didn’t look up, but he did reach down and adjust the bulge in his boxer shorts.
Zach was struggling with the coats.
“You’re on my shit list,” Lucy told him. She sat down on the couch and pulled the red wig off her head. As she ran her hand through her flattened hair, trying to perk it up, she looked over at Flynn. He was wearing a t-shirt screen-printed with a skeleton torso.
“At least you made an effort,” Lucy told him.
Elena and Meg sat down, flanking her on either side. Zach deposited the coats in a back bedroom and came back with a bottle of wine in his hands. Lucy snatched it and took a long sip before Zach could pass her a red plastic cup.
Scott yawned, stubbed out the joint with callused fingers and turned to the couch. He looked at the three girls in their costumes and snickered.
“So, why are you girls all dolled up?”
“This was supposed to be a party,” Lucy grumbled, glaring at Zach.
“Every day is a party.”
Scott leered at them. Meg felt like a horse being sized up at a market, examined and prodded by a greedy farmer. His eyes traveled from her breasts to Lucy’s lips, then finally to Elena’s, well, everything.
This was Lucy’s dream man, this slithery, pompous snake?
Lucy had rotten taste.
“You’ve grown up, Chica,” Scott told Elena, showing off that cocky sneer that he thought was so attractive. It wasn’t attractive. At all.
Lucy’s head whipped around, and she glared at Elena. She grabbed a handful of her dress and scooted over on the couch, so far away from Elena she was almost sitting on Meg’s lap.
Scott chuckled. He picked up the game controller and began to fumble with the buttons.
Meg found herself thinking about the boy from the bus- the one that had sucker punched Danny Vasquez and probably saved her life. With his floppy hair, thin frame, and perfectly imperfect features, he’d been a perfect male specimen. Scott Boyd wasn’t fit to spit-shine his worn sneakers.
“When is the party going to start?” Elena whispered to Meg as they watched the Boyds settle down in front of the TV.
“This is the party.” Meg wanted to cry. She’d wasted so much money on her adorable, little black dress.
Elena’s nervous laugh was loud and throaty and caused a distracted Scott to stop and look over at the couch. Zach took this opportunity to behead his brother’s avatar, chortling as the blood sprayed across the screen.
“I could call a friend,” Flynn offered.
“Go for it,” Lucy told him, throwing her hands up in the air. “I don’t see how this night can get much worse.”
The Mullet went into the kitchen to call his friend. Meg tried to watch the video game. It seemed sort of pointless, but it distracted her from the enormous tension on the couch. Lucy was gulping the wine from the bottle, swinging her legs and shooting murderous looks at Elena.
“Want some?” Lucy didn’t wait for an answer and tipped the bottle into Meg’s cup. She watched as it sloshed up to the rim. The smell made her feel like an eight-year-old again, discovering half-full bottles in the laundry bin, under the sink, and, one time, tucked inside her dollhouse. Having nothing else to do, she drank it. The wine tasted like fizzy juice laced with vinegar, but she managed to keep it down.
They watched the Boyds play video games for what felt like hours. When she looked down at her cup, she was surprised to find it empty. Lucy tossed the empty bottle onto the coffee table.
“Want more?” Scott reached down into the bag between his legs and pulled out another bottle of the cheap, fruity wine.
“Eeney Meenie Miney Moe,” he sang, pitch-perfect, pointing the bottle at each of the girls. “Who wants this?” He held the bottle out to Meg. “Do you?”
Before she could shout out a very loud, very definite no, to everything Scott was offering, Lucy jumped up. The straps of her dress were sliding down her shoulders.
“I want it,” she demanded, stepping in front of the other girls.
“What do you say?”
Meg wanted to slap his handsome face. How satisfying it would be to see him walking around all dazed, with the imprint of her hand, bright red and blazing, covering his cheek. He wouldn’t be so handsome then.
“Pretty, pretty please.” Lucy’s legs wobbled, and she sank to the floor.
It was awful to see Lucy, usually so confident and self-aware, reduced to a sniveling wreck because of a boy.
An arrogant, stupid boy.
The dress ripped under the weight of Lucy’s knees as she crept over to him.
“Please,” she whispered, pausing with her chest inches from his face. From that point of view, the loose bodice left very little to the imagination.
Scott allowed himself a good, long look before turning his head and holding the bottle out to Elena.
“I think Chica deserves it more,” he said.
Lucy watched, dumbstruck, as Elena leaned over and took the bottle. Scott took another bottle from the bag and tucked it between his legs. He cupped his hand and ran it up and down the bottleneck while he leered at Lucy.
“Try a little harder next time, kid.”
Elena got up to help Lucy back to the couch, but her friend swatted her hand away. She rose all on her own, waiting until she was somewhat steady on her feet before leaning on Elena for support.
“Meg, I need you,” she said.
Meg followed Lucy into the tiny, filthy kitchen. She wished she’d thought to bring a pair of the surgical latex gloves her mother had lifted from the supply closet at work. She would have felt much more comfortable leaning Scott’s 1950’s-era fridge if her pores were encased in indestructible polymers. Flynn was at the table, finishing up his phone call. He looked up at them as they came in, but continued with his conversation.
“What does she think she’s doing?” Lucy grabbed another bottle from the fridge. She gulped the wine down and wiped her mouth. The little lipstick that remained on her lips smudged across her arm, a crimson mark against her pale skin.
Meg knew she should probably defend Elena. She seemed just as disgusted by Scott as Meg herself was, but Scott’s misplaced attention might be the perfect excuse to push that long-limbed freak out of the way for good.
“She’s totally flirting with him,” Meg lied.
“What should I do?” Lucy poured some of the wine into Meg’s cup. “Bust her kneecap with a tire iron and shove her into the Charles?”
“Nothing that dramatic,” Meg said, though it was fun to imagine. “I know she’s your best friend, but, don’t you think she’s a little flaky?”
“A little?” Lucy’s eyebrow shot up. “She’s phyllo pastry in a world full of snickerdoodles.”
“She should keep her grubby little paw off Scott,” Meg insisted.
Lucy chugged from the bottle again and then tossed it to Meg.
“She’s pissing me off. So is he. And so is Zach. Whatever. I have to pee.”
She disappeared into the dark, little, bathroom, and shut the door behind her. Meg stared at the wine bottle, wondering if she should pour some more, but her head was getting fuzzy, so she decided against it. A predisposition toward alcoholism was, unfortunately, part of her genetic make-up. Instead, she looked over at Flynn, who was sitting at the table, watching her.
“You’re still here then,” she said. The wine she had given her a little courage. Scott had fully disgusted her, turning her off the entire race of men. She didn’t like any of them. Especially Ironic Mullet. It was time he knew it.
“My friend Ian can’t come,” he said, looking apologetic. He got up from the table, walked over to the counter and stood next to her. Meg tried to inch away, but there wasn’t a lot of room in the small galley kitchen.
“You have friends?” Meg used her thumbnail to scrape the label off the bottle. It felt good to destroy something. “Do they have mullets too? Or maybe ironic jherri curls?”
Flynn figured the ends of his absurd hair. “I guess maybe it’s time to give up the mullet.”
“It was time to give up the mullet in 1985,” Meg snapped. She poured some wine into her red cup. Genetics be damned. She wished Lucy would hurry up and get out of the bathroom. She didn’t like being alone with Flynn, especially since her pitiful attempts at bitchiness didn’t seem to faze him.
“1982, actually. The greatest year in American pop culture. That’s why I grew the mullet. As a tribute.”
“Tribute,” Meg scoffed. He was ridiculous. “To a year?”
“Yep,” Flynn explained, getting up from the table. He walked over to the counter and stood next to her. Meg tried to inch away, but there wasn’t a lot of room in the small galley kitchen. “The greatest movies were released in 1982,” he explained. “ET. Tron. The Wrath of Kahn. Anyway, in 82, everyone wanted to be American. It was a great time.”
Flynn took a big breath. With his cheeks puffed out, he looked like a scuba diver getting ready to submerge.
“I recognize you, you know,” he said when he exhaled. “From Jefferson. You don’t remember me?”
“No.” Meg wondered if anyone would hear if she cracked him across the head with the bottle.
“It doesn’t matter.” He stretched his hands over his head and yawned, moving closer to her as he did. He leaned over and pointed to her dress. “Is this an Audrey Hepburn thing?”
Meg took another sip of wine, hoping pink elephants or some other drunken delusion would appear and drown him out.
“You’re not an Audrey,” he continued, shaking his head. “Lucy, she’s the Audrey.”
“What?”
“Lucy is little. She’s the Audrey. She’s the little black dress.”
Meg stared at him, her mouth hanging open.
“You’re more…I dunno. You’re more…” He lifted his arms out and made circular motions.
“I’m what?” Meg said, gritting her teeth.
“Voluptuous,” he finally said and dared to grin.
“Voluptuous?” Meg echoed, her voice cracking. “You mean fat?”
He jumped back. “No, no. Not at all. I was trying to…you know…compliment you.”
“Right.” She was so angry she was shaking. The wine in her cup splashed back and forth, and before she could chicken out, she snapped her hand forward and threw the cup at him. The bulk of the wine landed on his pants, soaking into the crotch.
“Oops,” Meg snickered. She brought the cup to her mouth to cover her satisfied smile, but she wasn’t quick enough. He looked stunned as he stared at her, with his brown eyes blinking furiously. Surprise melted away into anger. He balled his hand into a fist as he rushed to wipe off the wine, but it was pointless. Her cup had been full, and her aim had been perfect.
The bathroom door opened. A rush of cold wind from the open bathroom window crept out to chill the room as Lucy stepped out and almost fell into Meg’s arms. She stumbled, recovered herself, and stared down at Flynn’s crotch.
“Yikes, Mullet,” she scoffed. “You could have used the sink, you know.”
“I didn’t…” he started before he realized it wasn’t worth explaining. He pushed away from them, barreling into Meg’s shoulder as he walked past her. He disappeared into the bathroom.
“I have to throw up,” Lucy said when the door closed behind him. “Help me outside.”
Meg hurried Lucy through the hallway.
“I’m going to puke,” Lucy insisted, sliding as she hurried down the stairs. Reluctantly Meg followed her, chasing her up the street and around the corner until Lucy finally bent over against a crumbling wall and started making gagging noises.
She tried to pat Lucy’s back, but Lucy shoved her away.
“Why doesn’t Scott like me?” she asked as she stood, swaying, in the too-big dress.
“Maybe Scott’s not worth it.”
It was one hell of an understatement. Scott was an enormous jerk. He didn’t deserve smart, witty, beautiful Lucy. Sure, he was good-looking, but so were many serial killers, politicians, televangelists, and other worthless degenerates.
“Not worth it? Maybe,” Lucy crossed her arms and looked at Meg with suspicion in her eyes. “Or maybe you’re hot for him.”
“What are you talking about? I am not hot for Scott.” She tried to sound firm, but she stuttered. “I know how much you’re into him. I’d never cross that line.”
“How do I know?” Lucy spat back. Her bloodshot eyes were hard. “Elena is flirting with him, and I’ve been friends with her for years. I’ve known you for, like, five minutes. Why should I trust you? Who are you, really?”
Meg remembered an afternoon spent building a block tower with Rashid Abbate. The eldest of the Abbate brood, Rashid was a quiet, thoughtful boy, a dream to babysit. He loved Legos and other construction toys. The two of them had spent hours assembling an enormous block castle, with towers and turrets and a real-working drawbridge. It was a masterpiece. Meg was going to take pictures of it and was about to head upstairs to grab her phone when Nevah, the Abbate’s toddler, came waddling into the room. She grabbed a large block from the bottom of the castle’s back wall, probably intrigued by the bright yellow color, and, almost instantly, the castle collapsed upon itself. Rashid was inconsolable and was still crying buckets of tears when his parents came home from work, hours later.
Looking at Lucy’s scowl, Meg felt much like she imagined Rashid had felt on that long-ago afternoon, only she didn’t have the freedom to collapse into tears.
“I’m your friend.”
“Friend?” Lucy’s laugh was short and bitter. “Johanne DeHaviland said she was my friend. Look how that turned out.”
“I’m your friend, Lucy,” Meg said. “And I’ll prove it to you.”