“No insult to kitties,” said Finn, smiling. “That’s just not what I am. I’m a panther.”
“I have to tell you,” I said. “You look pretty kittyish to me.”
“Hey, did you know a panther is really a black leopard?” he asked. “If you look closely, you can actually see the spots underneath the black.”
“You got that from me,” I said. “From the nature book.”
“Nuh-uh. I got it from watching the Discovery Channel.”
“Finn! I told you that in second grade. Don’t you remember, in the library?”
He changed the subject. “How can I be more panthery?” he mused, sorting through the makeup on the table. “Do you think I need whiskers?”
“Your face is black. You can’t put whiskers on.” Kim and Nora were across the way from us, setting up a pumpkin-carving table.
“Red. What about red whiskers? Then I’d be scary.” He took off his gloves and picked up a lipstick. “Where’s the mirror?”
I handed it over. He opened the lipstick and started drawing fat red lines across his face. He had no idea how to do it. It was a disaster. “You look like Freddy Krueger,”2 I said. “Especially if you put the gloves back on.”
“Damn! Now I’m some Freddy Krueger kitty cat.” He was laughing. “Maybe I should give up and be a dude in black.”
“Let me help.” I took a tissue and some cold cream and wiped the makeup off Finn’s cheeks. Then I redid his black greasepaint and used a makeup brush to draw thin red whiskers on his face. “Much better. Now you’re so the panther.”
I finished with his face and looked up. Kim was staring over at us from the pumpkin table, her eyes narrowed. “Mine,” she mouthed, pointing at Finn.
I put the makeup brush down and busied myself organizing the greasepaints.
Finn and I didn’t talk much the rest of the day—or ever again. I pretty much ignored him. It didn’t seem worth it. But even so, on the bus ride back he and Kim got in a whispered argument in the seat behind me and Nora.
“So thanks a lot,” she hissed at him, as the bus pulled out of the parking lot.
“What?”
“You know.”
“What?”
“Finn, don’t give me that.”
“What?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not telling you.”
“Kim, please. Whatever it is, I’ll make it up to you.”
“You were ignoring me all afternoon.”
“I was not!”
“Especially after you didn’t come to dinner with my parents last night, I’d think you could bother to hang out with me in school.”
“I had to work. There wasn’t anything I could do.”
“You could have got a sub.”
Finn sighed. “I had to work because I need the money, Kim.”3
“Fine. So ignore me all day, then. Just ignore me forever.” And then, as we got off the bus and stepped into the Tate parking lot, she really let him have it. When Kim stops beating around the bush and says what she really thinks—look out. She let forth a string of obscenities in English and Japanese, and told him she never wanted to see him again. There was no reasoning with her. Once she’s decided she’s right and someone else is wrong, there’s nothing anyone can do to change her mind. Everyone was standing around in the parking lot, listening and kind of pretending that they weren’t. It was a real scene. Finally, Kim stormed off to the girls’ bathroom and locked herself in a stall. Cricket and Nora and I went in there and tried to make her feel better, but she asked us to leave her alone, so we did.
The stud-muffin was in the doghouse for days after this—Kim called me that night and told me he had known about her parents’ dinner party for weeks, and had said he would come, and when he didn’t, all these annoying friends of her mother’s had spent the evening asking where her mysterious vanishing boyfriend was, ha ha ha—and then he’d eaten lunch the next day with a bunch of soccer players, and if he wasn’t going to pay attention to her and do stuff with her, why was he her boyfriend anyway and he could just go fuck himself.
I thought she was wrong, but I didn’t say anything. She was my best friend. And three days later they were cuddling tog ether in the library, so everything was okay.
When I got home that afternoon, my parents were in a fight. They were going to a costume party, and my mom wanted my dad to be a taco with her. She had spent the day at home, building a giant taco suit out of colored foam rubber, crepe paper and twine. She was going to be the filling, and my dad was supposed to be the shell.
“Elaine,” he said, “I can’t drive the car in a taco shell.”
“Juana doesn’t live that far,” my mom countered. “You said you’d wear whatever I came up with.”
