Chapter Twenty-One
Come as You Are
Mallory
“Mal!”
Mallory heard Zoe’s voice and cracked an eyelid. Forgetting she was in a hammock, she sat up like normal and almost flipped the whole thing. “Hey, Zo.”
Sunburned and hungover was not a good feeling. After this morning’s experience, she was never, ever-to-infinity-squared, drinking again, at least none of Derek’s swill. She’d have an elegant cocktail when she was in her twenties. She could see the appeal of that. Or an umbrella drink. When she recalled class, all she could remember was crying because she didn’t want to be a Disney princess.
“Is that really what happened?” she asked Zoe. She was hoping she had some weird false memory induced by stress and alcohol.
Zoe twirled her arm bangles. “You were a total disaster. Ben’s probably gonna break up with your sister after class. You probably scared the shit out of him.”
Mallory cringed. “My head hurts and…ugh.” She looked at her clothes, stained and wrinkled. Her hair felt like the time she’d slept in a bridesmaid’s hairdo, ratted and smashed into a weird shape. She felt as bad as she probably looked. “I’m giving up on boys altogether. I’ve had enough.”
Zoe laughed.
“I’m just going go to be celibate and focus on my education.”
It was almost time for the dance. Ben was probably holding Blake’s hand and walking to the mess hall. She wanted to do something, but there were no good choices. If she chased after him, he’d know she lied and hate her anyway. Through her pain, she said, “Zoe. Go to the dance. I don’t want to make both of us miserable. Plus, who’s George gonna dance with?”
Just to wallow in her misery a little deeper, Mallory said, “What do you think she’s wearing?”
In answer to her question, Blake appeared. She was walking down the path toward the hammock dressed in a peach strapless sundress. How dare Blake come parade around in her cute dress when Mallory was miserable?
She should yell at Blake, but what was the point? Deep down, she knew something like this would happen. She knew the risks of pretending to be someone else. It wasn’t entirely Blake’s fault that she got burned.
Instead of rubbing Mallory’s face in all the fun she was about to have, Blake expelled a breath and said, “You really like him, don’t you?” She looked straight at Mallory and waited for a response that didn’t come.
For once, Blake looked stone cold sober, like she wasn’t high on her own bravado. “I didn’t realize that you really liked him. If I had, well, I don’t know what I would have done, but…” Blake looked at her knees and said, “I’m not very good at this.”
Mallory couldn’t be hearing this right. Her sister almost sounded like she was going to apologize.
“What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry.”
Mallory did a double take. “What?”
Looking as contrite and sincere as a person could, Blake repeated herself. “I’m sorry.”
If she’d just looked out the window and seen a monkey riding a unicorn through camp, Mallory would have been less surprised. Blake never apologized. “I don’t get it. Why would you do that to me? You had to know that he was trying to ask me out and not you.”
“I wasn’t thinking about you. I wasn’t trying to be mean. In my world, it was all about my feud with Ben.”
Okay, that sort of made sense. But still, she knew Mallory liked him.
“You always forget about other people.” A light breeze came up, rustling the leaves and blowing Mallory’s hair in her eyes. She pushed it out of her face, remembering how Ben had done that for her the other day.
“Yeah, my therapist says I’m really self-involved.”
Mallory scoffed. That was an understatement.
“I’m sorry, though. I wish I could take it back.”
“I get sick of always being the one in the background getting stuck with your leftovers. The one time, and I mean it, the one time I had something good happen with a guy, you jumped in and wrecked it.” Well, maybe it wasn’t perfect. He thought she was Blake, but it was almost close to perfect and a few weeks from disaster.
Blake frowned and bit her lip, the same way Mallory did. It was obvious that she was really frustrated. Mallory had to admit, it seemed like Blake hadn’t been mean for sport this time. “I’m trying to fix it. I was talking to Ben and it hit me how bad those pranks really were.” She still looked slightly surprised by that. “And I realized how much you two like each other. I don’t want to screw that up any more than I already have.” Mallory had never seen her sister more serious before. “We need to have each other’s backs. It’s not like Dad’s there for us.”
She gave Mallory a hug. “I’m sorry, Mal.” After a second’s pause, she said, “I’m not going to go to the dance. I’m not sure what you want to do, but I’m going to stay out of it.”
“Really?” A glimmer of hope ignited in Mallory’s heart. Just a glimmer.
“Yeah. I don’t know if you can fix it, but I think you should go to the dance.”
Mallory shook her head and said some mopey, defeatist things, but Zoe wasn’t having any of it. She squared her shoulders and said, “Enough is enough. You are going to get off your ass, put on a pretty dress, and go tell that boy you’re in love with him.”
Mallory shook her head. “No. He’s not in love with me. He’s into some weird combo of me and Blake. He doesn’t even know me.”
“For one, you’re wrong. He’s been hanging out with you. Blake just got here. For two, who cares? Get off your butt and show him who you are now. If you don’t, you’re going to regret it.”
“There’s no way. I can’t go. Look at me.” She gestured to the disaster that she turned into in the last twenty-four hours. “It’s not like I have a fairy godmother waiting to fix me up.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Zoe. “I can fix you up.”
“And I’ll help,” Blake said.
Mallory looked up at her friend and sister. Zoe was right. She had to step up and stake her claim. If she didn’t, no one was going to do it for her. Blake did that effortlessly. If Mallory really wanted to learn from her sister, she needed to stop using her name like a shield, stand up as Mallory, and go after what she wanted.
She didn’t have enough time to take a shower and her hair was a disaster, but Zoe and Blake assured her that wasn’t a problem. An up-do, it seemed, was much easier to accomplish with dirty, ratted hair. As for an outfit, Blake offered to trade. In what must have been the sacrifice of a lifetime, Blake put on Mallory’s grubby T-shirt and shorts. Mallory slipped on Blake’s peach princess dress.
All said and done, she felt like Cinderella, or maybe Lydia Farrow. It might not have been a Regency ball gown, but Blake’s little cocktail dress felt just as fancy.
Mallory felt the energy surge through her. She was going to do it. She needed to tell Ben who she was and how she felt. The rightness of the plan resonated with her. She couldn’t pretend to be Blake anymore. No matter the consequences, the charade was over.
“Will you guys walk me to the dance?” The butterflies in stomach were going crazy. She half wanted to stop, but she couldn’t turn back. Giving up would be even worse.
The inter-camp dance was a much bigger deal than the last dance. Last time, they’d just moved the tables to the side and turned on some music. Tonight, the mess hall had been magically transformed into something resembling an actual dance hall. No more tables. No lingering cafeteria odor. The crowd, the smell of one hundred mixed perfumes, and the roar of music crowded Mallory’s senses. Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” was blasting through the speakers.
How appropriate, except for the rest of the lyrics.
Mal scanned the room for Ben.
As the crowd shifted, Ben came into view, framed by colorful dancers and a Camp Pine Ridge banner overhead. He was looking around, probably for her. When he caught sight of her a big smile broke out on his face, and he started striding toward her. She heard him start to say, “I was looking for you every—”
That’s when he saw Blake standing next to her. His expression darkened and he looked deliberately from one sister to the other. He shook his head in disbelief. “What the—?”
His reaction cleared one thing up—Ben was clearly not up to speed on the two Blakes situation. He stared at them for a few minutes, then zeroed in on Mallory. His eyes narrowed and he shook his head, but he had nothing to say. He stalked off the dance floor and straight out of the building. Zoe pushed Mallory toward the door. “That’s your cue, girl. Go get him! I’ll be here.”
Her legs moving of their own accord, Mallory ran. At the shore of the lake, she caught up to him. Softly, she touched his shoulder. “Ben,” she said softly.
He turned and gave her a dark look. “Which one are you?” he spat out.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He didn’t say anything, so she let the whole story tumble out. “I was so sick of being me, Mallory, of being the plain and boring sister no one noticed. I wanted to be someone else for the summer, so I let everyone think I was Blake. I just wanted to try being her. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to fall for you.” Mallory didn’t mean to say that last part, but there it was. It hung in there, begging for a response, a response Ben was not going to give her. At least not any kind of response she wanted to hear.
He exhaled in frustration. “How can you say that? I don’t even know who you are.” More pointedly, he asked, “Do you even know who you are?” He looked at her, waiting for a response.
Mallory slumped in defeat. “You’re right. I don’t know who I am.” How could she expect anyone else to love her until she knew who she was? “I’m sorry.”
Rule #1: Never apologize.
It didn’t apply to her anymore so she said it again. “I’m really sorry.”
Ben crossed his arms and gazed into the distance with a stony look. “You can’t just ‘I’m sorry’ your way out of something like this.” He looked at her dead-on and with a palms-up gesture said, “When were you going to tell me? At the end of camp? When we got back to Sofia? Were you hoping I wouldn’t notice?”
She looked at her feet, shame scalding her face. She’d never felt worse. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just wanted to be someone else for a few weeks. I certainly didn’t think I needed to worry about your feelings.”
Anger and shame mixed into a sour brew in the pit of her stomach. Had he forgotten everything he’d done? “You spent the first week of camp torturing me! You dyed my teeth green. Who even does that?”
Ben shook his head. “I already apologized for that, and I’m still really sorry I did it. Bla—” He shook his head in disgust. “Why am I defending myself to you? You’ve been lying about everything, Mallory.” He pronounced her name like an accusation.
She was guilty of being Mallory. Nothing new there.
Ben started walking away from her, staring at the ground intensely. “Not to mention your sister. You’ve been lying to me since camp started, and yesterday she joined in. You two have been playing me for a total fool.”
She flashed back to day one of camp when he told her his pet peeve had been lying.
He turned around and started in again. “You two are horrible people. Between all of your sister’s pranks and your lying… You can’t be mad at me for a few pranks. If you hadn’t pretended to be her, none of that would have happened to you.” Then he took it a step too far. “When you look at it that way, it was sort of your fault.”
Mallory stalked toward him. “Don’t even try to blame me for that. You were the one who pulled those pranks. That was your fault.”
Mallory was over it. So what if Blake had screwed up. It was time for him to move on. She put up her hand in an “I’m not listening to one more thing” gesture and shook her head. “You can’t have it both ways, mad that I pretended to be her and defensive about pranking me.”
With a shrug Ben walked away. “I need some space.”
She watched him go. Was he running to Blake? Probably not, but who knew. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, she sat on the end of the dock by herself in her sister’s fancy dress. The music of the dance and the sound of campers laughing echoed into the night. She’d never felt so alone. Adding insult to injury, Derek or someone (it was hard to tell in the dark) hurtled down the dock at top speed and cannonballed into the water in his dress clothes.
Now she wasn’t just invisible, she was heartbroken.