Same Difference

  How could she think that’s even close to the same thing? “Dad’s not on Broadway. He’s selling office space to companies.” I take my food back to my lounge chair.

  “I agree with your mom,” Meg says, joining me. She starts cutting her lettuce. I don’t know anyone else who cuts their lettuce. “Rick works a ‘typical’ job, but he’s very creative.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it.

  “Seriously!” Meg says. “Landscape design is a real thing you can study in college.”

  Rick is not a landscape designer. He’s a guy who pushes a mower and runs a weed whacker for his dad. Maybe it’s mean, but I ask, “Is that what Rick is going to apply to college for? Landscape design?”

  Meg turns her attention to the rest of the party. “Rick’s not going to school. He can make a lot more money right here in Cherry Grove. His dad’s landscape business is going to be his someday.” She’s not embarrassed or apologetic, even though both our parents are insane about us both getting into good schools. She’s honestly proud of him. “In fact, he’s practically running the whole business already.”

  I bite my burger and chew like crazy to keep from saying something I can’t take back. The truth is that Rick hardly works. He’s over at Meg’s house all the time. But by the time I swallow, I’m still angry. “You’re going to date a guy who doesn’t want to go to college?” I mean, doesn’t Meg want to be with someone who can teach her something new? Give her a different experience?

  Meg drops her head so far that her hair almost touches the plate. Maybe this isn’t perfect barbecue conversation, but come on. Sometimes I wonder if Meg really likes Rick, or if she just likes him because she thinks she should. I’ve been guilty of that myself, but at least now I know better. “I don’t mean to get you upset,” I tell her. “I just think you deserve to be with someone really special.”

  “Thanks,” she says, kind of quiet, as she pokes her way around the red onions. I think she might actually be considering what I’m saying, but when she looks up, she says, “So … what are you wearing tonight? What about your red halter?”

  There’s no way I can force Meg to see things my way. So I let it go and talk clothes. And it’s back to old times again. Except, not.

  After we eat, Meg and I part ways to get ready for fireworks. Every year, the whole town walks down to the Cherry Grove High School football field, home to the annual fireworks. When you’re a kid, you go with your parents, but as soon as you get to high school, you go with your friends. You bring a blanket, some mosquito repellent, and snacks. And maybe beers, if you manage to steal some, or rum mixed inside a bottle of Coke. Then the town sets off fireworks and the high school band plays all these patriotic songs. They actually do it up pretty nice for a small town in New Jersey.

  I step out of the tub and grab a fresh, thick white towel from the stack in the cabinet underneath my sink. I wipe the moisture off the mirror. It’s still foggy, but I can see that I got some color — creamy white lines trace the shape of my bikini against skin now the color of graham crackers.

  “Hey, when are you going down to the fireworks?” Claire ducks her head inside my room.

  “Why?” I walk over to my mirrored vanity and start flat-ironing my hair.

  Claire flops on my bed. “I don’t want to sit with Mom and Dad. They’re boring. Can I come with you?”

  I see her reflection in the mirror. She’s darker than dark, almost the color of a hot dog left on the grill too long. And she’s got on a light blue ribbed tank with a pair of white jean shorts that show off how toned her legs are from all that soccer. She looks beautiful. She looks older than me.

  “I don’t think so.” I can’t find my paddle brush. “Did you steal my brush?”

  “No.” Claire climbs down from my bed and hands it to me. It was just underneath my towel. “Why can’t I come with you and Meg?”

  I pull it out of her hand sort of fast. “Because there’s not enough room on our blanket. And also, you’re thirteen. We’re going to be drinking, and I don’t want you telling Mom and Dad.” I’m showing off to my little sister, and it makes me feel pathetic.

  “I won’t tell! I promise!”

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “But I’m going to be in the high school next year, Emily. I want to make friends.”

  “You’ll make friends. Your own friends.” I don’t mean to snap, but I don’t want Claire sitting with me. Meg is bound to be all cuddly with Rick. And then what … are Claire and I supposed to snuggle or something? No, thanks.

  “Seriously? I can’t?”

  “No,” I say. “Seriously. You can’t.”

  Claire groans as she gets up off my bed, like it takes some big effort. “Whatever.” She pauses before closing the door. “Don’t forget to flat-iron the back of your head. You never remember to do it, and it always looks lumpy.”

  I finish up my hair, put on some lip gloss, and meet Meg outside. Rick is late. Meg leans against the fire hydrant, staring off into the clouds. As we wait for Rick, I figure it’s as good a time as ever to tell her I can’t make it to his party. So I sit down next to her on the curb and say, “I have some bad news. Well, it’s not bad, but —”

  “What?”

  “I actually have a school thing on Friday night that I have to go to. So I don’t think I’ll make it to Rick’s party.” I give her a second to say something, but when she doesn’t, I keep going. “They’re taking us on a big gallery trip. It’s mandatory.” I hate to lie, but in a way it is mandatory. I have to go.

  “Oh.” Meg is sad. Sadder than I expect her to be. She chews on her fingernail. “Is this about Chad? Because he and Jenessa might not even come.”

  “No. It’s not about Chad. I don’t care about Chad.”

  “Okay, okay. Well, you could come after. I mean, the school thing won’t take all night, will it? I’ll just wait until you get back, and then we can go together.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I say.

  Meg’s cheek dimples, like she’s biting the skin on the inside. “Maybe I just won’t go.”

  “What? Why wouldn’t you go?” I don’t get why this is so difficult. Sure, we’ve always gone to parties together, but so what? It’s her boyfriend’s party, after all. She’s practically the guest of honor.

  “What if I got someone to pick you up from the train station whatever time you come back?”

  “I mean … I guess.” Maybe I should feel good that Meg wants me there so badly. But it’s been pretty well established that there’s no way I’m hooking up with Chad, so what’s the big deal? I’ve let her off the hook about some romantic night with Rick a hundred times already. Is it such a huge deal that we don’t go to one party together?

  “Sorry. I just really want you to come tomorrow.” She can’t even look at me. She just wrings the hem of her navy polo dress in her hands.

  I can’t stand seeing her so upset, twice today, because of me. And who knows how long this First Friday thing is going to take anyway. Maybe it will be over early, and then I’ll have nothing to do. “Okay, okay, I’ll come.” Even though I don’t want to. Even though I regret the words the moment they leave my lips.

  Meg brightens. “Thanks, Em. We’ll have fun there, I swear.”

  Rick’s truck finally roars down our cul-de-sac. He parks and gets out and wraps his tan arms around Meg, kissing her neck. “Sorry I’m late. I was helping my mom clean up.”

  Meg wriggles out from his grip. “Hey, Emily!” She smiles. “Let’s ride in the back of Rick’s truck.”

  Rick looks sore for a second, but then he takes off his light blue baseball cap and puts on a smile. “Here,” he says. “Let me get my dustpan and I’ll make sure there isn’t any dirt back there.”

  “Thanks,” I tell Rick. Meg doesn’t say anything to Rick at all. She just puts the blankets and her picnic basket in the cab with Rick and we both climb into the bed.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask her. Maybe what I sai
d back at the barbecue is sticking in her mind.

  But Meg seems almost caught off guard by my question. “Everything’s fine,” she says. “Why?”

  “No reason,” I say. “Never mind.”

  Rick drives slow, past all the families walking to the field, blasting Bruce Springsteen through his open windows. We wave to our parents, to our neighbors, who all walk in a big group. Claire doesn’t wave back. She keeps her hands tucked in her armpits.

  At the field, I see everyone from our high school. Meg and I spread out our blanket. Meg has a picnic basket all prepared for us. It’s, like, perfect. Cubes of cheese, crackers, prosciutto, and melon. A few people stop by to say hello as the field continues to get darker. The band squeaks and toots and drums its way through a warm-up. Meg and I light up two gold sparklers and swirl them through the thick, muggy air. I like the way the color burns into your eyes, leaving a trail like a ghost.

  When it gets too dark to see, everything settles. People find their way back to their blankets. I sit down at the edge of the blanket and pull my arms inside my halter. Rick kneels on the other side and motions for Meg to sit between his legs.

  “Emily’s cold,” she says, shaking her head. “Let’s keep her warm.”

  “I’m okay, really,” I say.

  “It’s fine, Emily,” Meg says and practically pushes me into the middle of her and Rick.

  I’m suffocated between them. I almost wish Claire was here, or that I was on the blanket with my family.

  The band kicks into “America the Beautiful” and the fireworks start. I have to say, they’re less amazing than I remember them to be. Spaced out. One blossom at a time.

  I shift my eyes from the sky to the ground and watch the colored light dance along the grass and against the backs of the people sitting in front of us, and fight off the loneliness. I want to memorize the way the light looks for my sketchbook. My fingers twitch. I wish I was drawing.

  Even though Fiona technically lives in Philadelphia, her neighborhood, Fish Town, is still really far away from the part of the city where the university is. She gave me directions that included a train and two buses, but I was afraid I’d be late, so I just took a taxi once I got into the city. Mom gave me extra money, since I’d told her it was a field trip, too. Otherwise, I doubt she’d have let me come.

  The cab pulls up to Fiona’s address. She’s standing in her driveway, rinsing her hair with a garden hose. The pink is gone. A river of electric blue water rolls off the long strip and down the divide between the driveway and the grass.

  “Wow! You’re dyeing your hair.” I try to hide the disappointment in my voice, because I loved the pink.

  “I got bored.” She squeezes the water out. “My mom doesn’t let me do this in the bathroom because these vegetable dyes stain the tile grout. I don’t mind so much in the summertime, but it’s too freaking cold to use this hose on my head in the middle of winter.”

  As Fiona goes to shut off the water from a spout near the stairs, I glance around. Fiona doesn’t have a house but an apartment. It’s a big redbrick building with a wooden steeple up on the very top, which makes me think it was some kind of factory or maybe even a church before it became an apartment building. Broken glass sparkles on the curb in front of it. Thick black wires hang slacked and sloppy across the street, and it looks so unprofessional that it makes you think it was done illegally or by someone who just didn’t care.

  I follow Fiona inside. We walk down a long hallway with apartment doors on either side and take a staircase up a few flights. On the walls hang black-and-white photos of the building back in the day, with lines of men and women in starched white clothes posing in front of big white trucks.

  “This place was an old washhouse,” Fiona explains. “All the rich people from Center City would send their laundry here.” We reach the end of the hallway and stand in front of a large red door. “Our apartment used to be the president’s office. It’s nice because it has two floors. I hate apartments on all the same floor. They’re like coffins.”

  We step inside the apartment, and it does seem bigger than I thought it would. But I don’t get a chance to look around. We pass the kitchen and immediately charge up the stairs and into her bedroom. I’m right behind Fiona as she opens the door, because I’m so excited to see inside.

  The room is like an attic, with vaulted ceilings, and two tiny, four-panel windows perched up high, with deep windowsills that act as shelves. One is full of half-burnt religious candles with Spanish names. She has Christmas lights strung around the door. The wood floor is covered in splattered paint. Japanese candies and paper lanterns are piled in the corner. Her old wooden dresser is missing both the top and bottom drawers, but clothes are crammed inside anyway. There’s a big green chair in the corner. Rips in the velvet are patched by silver duct tape.

  And there are tons of live animals, too. A pair of lovebirds cooing in a white wire cage. An iguana baking under a lightbulb inside a huge glass fish tank. I saw a litter box in the foyer downstairs, but I haven’t seen a cat yet.

  It’s like the total opposite of my room. It’s alive.

  I step carefully around everything, like I could somehow pollute it with my plainness. I find myself standing in front of a poster of Andy Warhol, who I remember from Ms. Kay’s slide shows. It’s a screen-printed photograph of him, all fuzzy and orange, wearing black Ray-Ban sunglasses. Underneath is his famous quote, IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE WILL BE WORLD-FAMOUS FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES. Only Fiona’s crossed the fifteen-minute part out and replaced it with FIFTY YEARS TO LIFE! in black marker. The exclamation point has its own shadow.

  Fiona crouches in front of her mirror, and in two seconds she has pinned up her hair all funky and cute. “I love your hair like that,” I tell her.

  I watch her eyes move from her reflection on to me. “Do you want to play beauty parlor?”

  I bounce on my toes. I can’t help it. “Really?”

  “Here.” Fiona throws some stuff off a plastic mushroom stool. “Come sit.”

  It’s weird, actually watching myself transform. My reflection in the mirror, though partially obscured by a million random pieces of paper and stickers tucked into the edges of the black plastic frame, reminds me of the films they show in science class, where a flower grows out of the ground at warp speed.

  Fiona parts a bobby pin using her free hand and her mouth. “Your hair is so healthy, I want to throw up all over you.” She secures a twisty section up on the crown of my head. “I’ll be lucky if I don’t go bald by graduation,” she says, scrunching her hair in her hand. It does sound dry. “I think I’m going to have to dye it all black in a few days. That’s the best color to do. It seeps into the tiny holes and flakes in your hair strands and pumps them up and makes it strong again. It’s like hair steroids.”

  “I love the colored stripe!”

  “Yeah, I know, but I get bored of things really quick, so it’s like I’m always on to something new. I think my mind speed is double that of everyone else.” Fiona smiles. “Okay. You’re done!”

  I turn and check out the side of my head. The countless blond swirls make me look like a girl from another time. Fiona has also parted my hair on the side, pulling a big sweep across my forehead. It looks dramatic. “I wish I could do things like this to my hair,” I say.

  “You’re so funny, Emily. I’m just pinning it up. It’s not like heart surgery.”

  I stand up and check out the rest of me in the full-length mirror. My new hairstyle totally doesn’t go with my outfit. I wanted to wear something cool for First Friday, but I also needed my outfit to work for Rick’s party. I stole my dad’s Villanova shirt and safety-pinned the sides of it on the train so it would fit tighter. I paired that with my white jean miniskirt, which would also work for Rick’s party. But the hair is too fancy for the T-shirt. I have a purple silk cami Meg really likes me in, stuffed in my bag. I figured I’d change into that in the train station, but I guess I could wear it now. Only my hair is too origi
nal for the clothes that will get me by for the second part of my night. A piece of hair uncoils and falls in front of my right eye, like it knows this isn’t going to work.

  Fiona steps to the rescue, and twists it back into place. “You could borrow something of mine to wear, if you wanted,” she says. “In fact, you should probably dress a little more fancy. That way, no one says anything when you reach for the wine.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Speaking of free booze, I was thinking we should order dinner, otherwise we’re bound to get sloppy drunk. Do you like Indian food?”

  “I’ve never had Indian food.”

  “Geez! It’s like you’re from the moon or something! I’ll order you some stuff I know you’ll love. And I guess I should text Robyn and Adrian about the dress code thing, too. I mean, I’m sure Robyn already knows, but Adrian is clueless. At least you grew up remotely near the city. He’s almost a lost cause.” She disappears, then sticks her head back in the door a second later. “Ooh. The clothes on the floor of my closet are clean. I swear.”

  I wait to move until I hear her feet pounding down the stairs. Then I pull open the door to Fiona’s closet.

  I don’t know if it happens because there’s almost too much to look at, patterns and shapes and colors and materials, but on the floor, at the very top of the mountain of clothes, is this bright blue dress. It’s simple in shape — tight on top, with two thick straps, then it balloons to a short skirt with lots of white tulle layers underneath that puff it out.

  I take off my clothes and quickly slide the dress on. It’s a bit loose in the boobs, so I keep my bra on and try to line the straps up, but otherwise, it’s a perfect fit. I do a twirl, right there in the middle of the room, and wonder what it would be like if I were really this person.

  It feels good, even if it’s just pretend for a night.

  Fiona stops in the doorway. “Oh my God, Emily! You look so rad!”