That’s when I started screaming and crying. That’s when I raked all my dolls across the sand tray. That’s when I kicked over the pottery lamp in her office. It broke into triangular pieces all over her black-and-white chevron rug.
My father came running in from the waiting room. “I heard a commotion,” he said. “I heard things breaking.” His face looked freaked. He had a lot of looks like that during those days.
My therapist was on the floor cleaning up the pieces of her lamp, saying, “It’s all right. Honestly, it’s all right.”
“Oh, now you’re coming in,” I yelled. “Now you decide it’s time to step in? Father of the year, aren’t you?”
“Blythe, it’s not like that, honey. None of this has been easy on any of us.”
“I wish I could just leave. I wish I could just leave all of you,” I said. I threw myself onto the couch and cried and cried.
I heard my therapist coaching my father.
“Tell her that you’re going to do your best to protect her.”
So he walked over to me. I could hear his feet creak across the room, his footsteps so quiet and calculated. He was so concerned. Not sure if it was about me, or about how to handle this situation. This tween girl falling apart at the seams.
I sat up. Wiped the tears from my face. My cheeks burning.
“Don’t worry, Daddy. I’ll be fine,” I said.
I let him off the hook again. And that was probably the end of my childhood right there.
“Blythe, you don’t have to say it’s fine.”
And they talked and talked. But I faded out into nothing. I felt all my memories of my mother slipping past me in a fuzz, like the kind you pick off your pillow. You have to deal with bad things in life like that sometimes. Like lint. And so that’s how I learned to deal with a lot of painful things. Like lint.
14
ALI
I’ve been going to the C-wing bathroom with Blythe Jensen for about a week now, which is causing problems between me and Sammi.
Sammi wants to know if I’m going back to the gynecologist. Sammi wants to know if I got the STI test back. (I did. It was negative.) Sammi wants to know if I’m sleeping. If I’m eating. If I want to get disco fries at the diner. If I’ve talked to someone about the thing that happened, because we can’t name the thing that happened. I won’t let her. I won’t let her tell Raj. I won’t let her tell anyone. And I don’t want to answer any of Sammi’s questions because I don’t want to think about that night. I don’t want to think about anything at all.
I walk out of my third period class, and Blythe’s standing there waiting for me like she said she would be. The hallway is chaotic between periods and so many kids and schlumpy teachers bump into each other, and there’s Blythe, this lone spirit, standing right under the MUSTANG PRIDE signs, watching me. Her greenish-blue eyes shimmer as I step closer. I blush. I’ve never had this kind of attention from another girl before. Not like this. Not like Blythe.
She nudges me with her elbow. Wraps her hand around mine.
“Stand against the locker,” she says.
“Huh?”
“You heard me. Stand against the locker—I want to show you your posture. You’re a sloucher, Greenleaf.”
Blythe is Eliza Doolittle–ing me. She’s going to turn me into her little smooth-armed robot. Her little fashion princess. She’s going to dress me up like a doll next and curl my hair. I back up against the metal locker, trying to get my body straight. Blythe pushes my shoulders back.
“Relax,” she says. “Drop your shoulders.”
I do what she says. But I slept funny last night. Every night since the party. I stretch my neck to the left. Then to the right.
“Ugh! What are you doing?”
“I’m loosening up my neck.”
“You’re going to give yourself fucking whiplash, Greenleaf.”
“I don’t think you get whiplash from standing.”
She softens her face, her perfect teeth white and gleaming like she has the answers to everything, and maybe she does. “We’ll work on it. Getting your shoulders down,” she says, and then zeroes in on my triceps. Blythe has a hot-pink reverse French manicure. Her nails are clear and the half-moons are neon. She runs her nails down my arm. It tingles. “Then we’ll work on the pimples on the back of your arms.”
My skin is bumpy. A little freckly, but I don’t have pimples. I don’t think I have pimples. At least I never thought I had pimples until this moment.
“Touch my triceps.” Blythe hooks her elbow toward me and makes a muscle. I laugh, a nervous laugh because it sounds so strange, like she’s showing off. “I’m not going to bite, Greenleaf.”
So I touch her skin. And it’s so smooth. So shiny. So much softer than mine. I’m in a trance from her arms. And I stare back at mine. How did my arms get so ragged? How did mine become so neglected?
“See how smooth I am, Ali? See how shiny my skin is?”
I touch her because she asks me to, and I want to, just to be closer to her because Blythe’s skin glows like every other part of her. None of it seems real, except it all is.
“How do you get your elbows so pale? And how do you get all those bumps off?”
“You have to exfoliate. You gotta dry loofa that shit out. Then alcohol. Then almond oil.”
“Wait, doesn’t alcohol burn?”
“Of course it burns. What are you, a pussy?”
“Hell no.”
“Do you ever go to yoga, Greenleaf?”
“Not really.”
“You should take a class with me one night. It’s really good for your posture, and your mind too.”
“I know what yoga is, Blythe. I don’t live under a rock.”
Blythe’s face gets crumply and weird. She’s not used to someone being irritated with her, or snarky. They’re all yes girls. And I’m supposed to be a yes
