Junior Year
April
I have a new friend! She’s very weird, but I’ll get to that part.
First let’s take a moment to appreciate how strange that is, making a friend junior year. Especially a friend who’s a girl. Girls are so weird. They have their cliques and their squads and trying to break in once they’re set will only get you laughed at or pitied.
It’s really just been Jade and me since eighth grade, since Val dropped me once she made dance team. And no, I’m not over it. You don’t get it: Val and I showered together when we were little. We spent hours in my basement playing house; I was the father, banging away at Wonder Brother’s play work bench with a plastic hammer while Val cradled her Just Born baby doll, her free hand smoothing her stomach, swollen with a pillow under her shirt.
And then when she had the chance to become popular, I was Val’s six pieces of silver. I spent so many nights crying and listening to Dad’s old sixties folk albums, and then years after that wondering what I did wrong to deserve to be dropped by my best friend in such a callous way. I’ll never get an answer, I guess. Sometimes I imagine cornering her, grabbing her by the shoulders, and shaking her, demanding one. Why? Why wasn’t I good enough for you?
Thank God for Jade moving to Broken Falls, or I would have been absorbed into whatever social group would take me. And being a loser or a freak is worse than being Nothing. People might think Jade and I are aloof because it’s always just the two of us, like we think we’re too good for Broken Falls, but really, they’re the ones who decided we’re Nothing. We’re fun at parties (if we get invited) and they laugh at our jokes in class (when we crack them), but otherwise, we don’t exist.
And that’s fine: we’re BaileyAndJade. JadeAndBailey. Always one. Just the way we like it.
But now there are three of us. Bailey and Jade and Kacey.
Jade and I’ve been hanging out with her quite a bit now that I’m not grounded for what happened with Cliff anymore; my parents let me out of my one-month sentence early for being a Very Good Girl. How I convinced them I am a Very Good Girl: come home after school and my shift at Friendly Drugs, do my homework, then numb my mind with reality television until I pass out. In other words, become my dad.
So yesterday at lunch, Kacey kept twirling the faded purple end of her braid over her finger. Jade paused from slurping her iced tea and pointed. “I can fix that for you.”
Kacey stopped twirling. Studied the end of her hair as if it weren’t attached to her.
“The drugstore sells that shade,” Jade said. “I can re-dye it for you. Or not. It’s whatever.”
“No…” Kacey resumed twirling. “It’s just that I kind of want it gone.”
“Jade cuts my hair,” I piped up. “She could just trim the bottom off, right?”
I looked at Jade, who just shrugged. Kacey kept fiddling with her braid, nervous, as if I’d suggested an appendectomy and not a haircut.
But she was waiting by my car after school, a let’s do this look on her face. We went to Jade’s; freshman year Jade gave me bangs in my bathroom and my mom bitched for weeks about finding my hair under the sink, so I knew better than to do it at my house.
Once we were nestled in Jade’s bathroom, Kacey started looping the tail of her braid over her finger again. Jade grabbed it from her gently. “I’ll only take the purple off. It’s, like, two inches.”
“Okay.” Kacey sat on the toilet, knees up to her chest, while Jade produced a pair of silver scissors from beneath the sink. I sat in the corner of the bathroom, shifting around the loose tiles at my feet like they were puzzle pieces. Jade’s dad had started the renovation project months ago and lost steam, like the pothead he is. He and Jade would eat nothing but Oreos and instant noodles if she didn’t do the grocery shopping.
Kacey flinched as the shears closed around her hair. Snip, snip. Purple locks fell to the floor like a My Little Pony getting a hack job. Jade patted Kacey’s back. “Mirror.”
Kacey got up and stared at herself, water spots on the mirror forming a circle around her face. She hesitated: “Can you cut more? I want it all gone.”
I’d only ever seen Jade do trims, so I didn’t want to be around for the inevitable train wreck. “I’m gonna grab a Diet Coke,” I said. “You guys want one?”
Jade nodded, her tongue poking out between her lips as she rearranged Kacey’s hair.
I lingered in the kitchen for a bit, lamenting the empty cabinets—it meant Jade was probably eating all her meals at the taqueria on her lunch and dinner breaks. I’d have to sneak some ramen and mac and cheese into the cabinets. I grabbed three Diet Cokes from the fridge and arranged them in my arms pyramid-style.
That was when I noticed Kacey’s bag, just sitting there on the kitchen table, next to mine. I shot a glance down the hall; Jade and Kacey were quiet.
I eyed the notebook sticking out of the bag, the one she was always sketching in during history. I set the cans down and ran a finger along the exposed spine. Without removing it from the bag, I lifted the front cover.
Inside was an ink drawing on the cardboard. Intricate calligraphy. I had to turn the book slightly to make out the words: I WAS BORN WITH THE DEVIL IN ME
Jade’s voice rang out: “Bay! I’m thirsty!”
A chill ran through me. I shut the cover and arranged the notebook exactly as it was before I touched it. The words rang in my head as I padded down the hall. I was born with the devil in me.
What the fuck?
“So what do you think?” Jade was beaming in the bathroom doorway, spinning Kacey around like a rag doll on display. Kacey came to a halt, a blush creeping into her cheeks. Jade had given her a shaggy bob, the now freshly blond ends of her hair grazing her chin at a jaunty angle.
“You look hot,” I said.
Kacey smiled, no teeth, and tugged the ends of her hair along her jaw. She looked innocent. She looked transformed from the girl who walked into history last month. The girl with the dirty hair with purple tips and the stud in her nose.
Later, when I got home, I Googled that quote: I WAS BORN WITH THE DEVIL IN ME. You know who said it? H. H. Holmes. As in, the serial killer.
Kacey’s face took shape in my mind as I tried to sleep. I thought of the Markhams, asleep in their beds, while Kacey stayed awake, inking over those disturbing words in the front cover of her notebook.
What are you hiding, Kacey Young? And who are you trying to convince everyone you are?