your sleep,” she finally said.
MY TEMPERATURE RIGHT before we left for the train station was just over a hundred degrees, but the truth was that by the time we passed Dodsonville, which was the stop before Riley, I felt almost normal. My parents greeted us excitedly. “Did you go to the top of a skyscraper?” my mother asked. “Was it wonderful?”
In the car, my father said to my grandmother, “It was very good of you to take Alice,” and this seemed a type of apology.
“The house was so quiet without you two,” my mother said. “I even started to read one of Granny’s magazines.”
My grandmother smiled over at me, and I almost smiled back, but then I remembered and turned my face to look out the window.
DENA CALLED THE next day. “You need to come over,” she said, and she sounded tearful. “It’s an emergency.”
“What happened?”
“Just come.”
I was standing in the kitchen, and after I hung up the phone, I pulled on my coat and hurried outside. Across the street, I knocked on the Janaszewskis’ front door—their doorbell had been broken since 1958—but I was too cold and concerned to wait, so I turned the knob and let myself in. “Hello?” I called.
In the living room, Dena’s sisters, Marjorie and Peggy, were squabbling over whose turn it was to play a record. Peggy glanced at me, said, “Dena’s upstairs,” and returned to the disagreement.
On the second floor, the door to the room Dena and Marjorie shared was open, but the room appeared vacant. Tentatively, I said, “Dena?”
A hand emerged from beneath one of the twin beds and waved at me. I squatted, then leaned forward so I was on my knees, and lifted the dust ruffle. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Should I come under there?”
“I’ve ruined my life.” Dena’s voice was loose and watery from crying.
I rolled over so I, too, was on my back, then I inched beneath the bed. Immediately, I could feel dust in my throat. There also were a few unidentifiable objects—shoes, maybe, and old toys—that I had to push out of the way before I was next to her. “What happened?” I asked.
She swallowed and then said mournfully, “I shaved my sideburns.”
“But you don’t have sideburns.”
“Yeah,
I grabbed a fistful of dust ruffle and held it up so daylight would show under the bed. “I can’t see anything,” I said. “You have to come out.” I scooted away, and after a minute, she followed.
When she was sitting upright on the floor, her shoulders against the bed, her face was red and blotchy, her eyes were wet, and her hair, which was lighter brown than mine but styled the same way, was sticking up in the back like a little girl’s. She reached for a mirror that was resting on the carpet shiny side down. I knew this mirror well, having spent a large portion of my life gazing into it, often at the same time as Dena. The reflective part was about the size of an actual face, with a dull pink plastic backing and handle. Holding the mirror up in front of her, Dena turned to the side, her eyes focused grimly on the spot around her ear.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Well, first I cut them, but they looked funny, so then I used a razor.”
I came in closer and rubbed the tip of my index finger over the area in question. “You did a good job. It’s completely smooth. Turn to the other side.” When she did, I touched the skin there, too. “It’s fine,” I said.
“But think about when it grows back. I’ll have stubble. Alice, I’ll have a five o’clock shadow!”
“You can just shave again.”
“Every day for the rest of my life?”
“Nobody will notice,” I said. “I promise.”
“Robert thinks hairy girls are like monkeys. You know how Mary Hafliger—”
“Dena, don’t,” I said. “She can’t help it.” Mary Hafliger, who I was in Spirit Club with, had dark, thick hair on her forearms, and I had heard it discussed among both our male and female classmates.
“She can too help it,” Dena said. “At the least, she could bleach it.”
“Mary’s nice,” I said. “Remember those pipe-cleaner Santa Clauses we were selling before Christmas? She glued all their beards on individually, and it took her about a week.”
Dena grinned. “Yeah, I’ll bet she glued on their beards.” Dena had made good on her preadolescent plan of becoming a cheerleader, and Spirit Club members ranked well below cheerleaders in our school hierarchy. More than once, she had encouraged me to trade up—if I tried out for cheerleading, she would put in a good word for me—but I had no desire to yell and leap in front of other people.
Dena was still holding the mirror, looking at herself, and, idly, she pursed her lips. Her teariness seemed to have departed. Then she set the mirror back on the carpet and whispered, “I’m only half a virgin.”
“What do you mean?”
“Close the door.” She gestured toward it, and when I had, Dena said, “I let Robert put it in partway.”
“You don’t have to do what he says, Dena. He should respect you.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t?” She smirked.
On prior occasions, I knew Dena had let Robert place his hand inside her skirt or pants, though not inside her
