The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

sits up a little straighter. “I am going to be walking, Loretta,” she says very clearly. “I just haven’t started yet.”

Loretta gives her a bottle-of-vinegar-and-a-bag-of-lemons smile. “Yeah, sure you are. As soon as summer vacation starts.”

“Well, you can count me out,” says Ash. “I’m not walking anywhere. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s winter out there. Didn’t you see the snow on Sunday, Sicilee? What did you think it was? Global dandruff? I do not walk in the snow. Do you know what snow would do to my boots and my skin?”

Kristin taps a foot softly but restlessly against the floor, watching Sicilee as though she has never really seen her before. And maybe she hasn’t. Not this Sicilee, all in south-west tones again (brown and beige and terracotta) with her crunchy granola list of things she’s decided they should do. Kristin feels betrayed. All of a sudden, she, Ash and Loretta are in the wrong? Who does Sicilee think she is, telling them what they should do, like God’s gone on vacation and left her in charge? It wasn’t all that long ago that Sicilee would have been as likely to suggest to her friends that they walk to school as she would have been to suggest that they swap their lives with teenagers living in the slums of Lima, but now she’s changing into someone alien and unfamiliar right before Kristin’s eyes. If you were to tell Kristin that Sicilee thinks it’s Kristin who’s become critical, she’d laugh hollowly. It is Sicilee who has become critical. Critical and judgemental. Sicilee’s always pointing out that they’re doing something wrong. Sitting there every lunch hour with her organic salads and fake chicken sandwiches like she’s better than the rest of them. Just who does she think she is?

“Maybe Sicilee means that you should take the school bus,” suggests Kristin.

“Oh, yeah. Right!” Ash squeals. “The school bus! That’s a great idea!” The sparkly pink hearts dangling from her ears swing wildly as she laughs. “Are you serious? You think I’m going to take the school bus? Like some little kid? Are you nuts?” The idea of joining the poor unfortunates on the bus whose parents won’t buy them cars or drive them to school makes Ash laugh so much she knocks her bottle of water off the table.

“That’s another thing you have to give up,” says Kristin. “Don’t drink bottled water. That’s number seven.”

“And drink what?” Ash wants to know. “Water from the tap? You mean, sewage? Water with everybody’s pills and crappola in it? Why don’t I just lap it up from the gutter like a stray dog?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sicilee begins. “The point is—”

“Holy Mother of God,” says Loretta. “What is this? Wear it more than once? Wear what more than once?”

“Well, what do you think? Heavy armour?” By now, Sicilee has not even thought of smiling for at least two minutes. “Clothes, Loretta. Wear your clothes more than once.”

“Are you sick?” Loretta makes a series of strangled, hacking sounds. It is either ironic laughter or an attempt to cough up a piece of tuna salad that has gone down the wrong way. “Wear the same thing two days in a row? What’s that supposed to do for the planet? Make it die laughing?”

“Sweet Mary, why are you all being so difficult?” At the moment, it looks as though Sicilee may never smile again. “It doesn’t mean wear the same thing on Tuesday that you wore on Monday, for God’s sake. It just means don’t wash everything after you’ve only worn it once. You know, so you save on energy and water and everything.”

“Even if you’ve got mustard on it? Or dirt?” Ash’s face makes it clear to anyone who might be interested that you don’t have to be threatened by killer mummies armed with Uzis and machetes to know what true horror is. “Oh, I don’t think so, Sicilee. Some of us have standards.”

“Here’s another interesting item,” says Kristin with what can only be described as demented glee. “Don’t dry clean.” She looks over at Sicilee. “What are you supposed to do instead? Beat your clothes on rocks?”

“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait, this is even more gross!” screeches Loretta. “Buy used!” Apparently, Loretta, too, has discovered the essence of true horror. “Buy used what? Clothes? Are you saying that I should wear somebody’s smelly, cast-off clothes? Then what are all the poor people in the Third World supposed to wear?”

“Are you all being deliberately dense?” asks Sicilee.

“Well, excuse us for breathing,” says Ash.

Sicilee snatches up the unwanted pages of advice. “And excuse me for trying to educate you.” Her unsmile moves from Ash to Kristin to Loretta. “I’m obviously wasting my time.”

Kristin, Ash and Loretta all stare back at her with looks like barbed-wire fences.

“Just where do you get the nerve to tell us what to do?” Loretta would like to know. “Not only do you not walk to school, you are not wearing somebody else’s clothes. You are wearing your clothes. We were with you when you bought that outfit.”

“And let’s be totally honest here.” Kristin leans forward, in the earnest, I’m-only-saying-this-for-your-own- good way of a very best friend. “You’re not even really a vegetarian or a vegan or whatever you told that dumb club you are. You came to my house last week and ate steak. Rare.” She kicks Sicilee’s foot under the table. “And your boots aren’t vegan leather either – they’re the ones you bought in November.”

“Sweet Mary,” Sicilee cries in exasperation. “I can’t just throw out a hundred pairs of shoes, Kristin. We’re supposed to be living in a waste-not, want-not kind of way.”

“You don’t have to throw them out,” says Loretta with a smile. “You can give them away.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine Late but not late enough

It’s Saturday, and on Saturday afternoons Maya and her friends always meet at Mojo’s coffee bar, a dimly lit and brick-walled room, where they sit at worn wooden tables, eat paninis and bagels, drink espressos, and listen to jazz and Latin funk. Hood up, head down, Maya hurries through the falling snow, watching her breath float in front of her in tiny, frozen clouds. Late again. Interestingly enough, however, the main thought in Maya’s mind isn’t that she’s late again, but that if, by some sadistic twist of fate, she should run into Cody Lightfoot, she will have no choice but to join a cloistered convent and spend the rest of her life behind a high brick wall. She could never face him again if he saw her like this.

The bell tinkles as Maya bursts through the door, stopping to shake the snow off her boots onto the newspapers spread across the entrance. She throws back her hood and squints into the room, adjusting her eyes to the atmospheric gloom after the brightness of the day outside.

The others are all gathered around their favourite table in the corner, already eating their lunches.

“Yo!” Maya calls as she sidles through the packed room. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“Better late than never.” Jason waves a fry in greeting. “Which makes a nice change.”

Alice pats the seat beside her on the bench. “We were afraid you weren’t coming because of the weather.”

Maya sighs inwardly. Why didn’t she think of that? It’s not only a good excuse, it would have been more or less true.

“It’s damn cold out there,” says Finn. “I wouldn’t have come myself, only I knew my dad would volunteer me to shovel the driveway when the snow stops, so I decided to take my chances with frostbite.”

Maya slips out of her coat and hangs it on one of the hooks on the wall, throwing herself onto the bench next to Alice so quickly and with so much force that Alice drops her fork. But not quite quickly enough.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Mallory leans around the table for a better view. “Are those your little sister’s clothes?”

“Of course they’re not Molly’s,” says Maya. “I was late, so I just put on the first thing I found.”

Which is true in the sense that she is wearing all she could find. What Maya is wearing are clothes she schleps around the house in that haven’t seen daylight in at least a year. Uncool clothes. Clothes she wouldn’t want to be buried in at night on an uninhabited island in the middle of the Atlantic.