Chapter 8

THE COOL NIGHT AIR ENVELOPED CARA AS SHE FLOATED home after the meet. A police car wailed past, its red lights flashing, but she barely noticed. Not when Ethan’s sweet smile was dancing in front of her.

The windows were dark at home, but her parents’ cars were in the garage.

Inside, there was a line of light under Mom’s office door. Cara poked her head in. Her mother was staring intently at a page of densely packed legal text, a glass of Scotch beside her. Samson was curled up on a stack of law journals on the floor. From the Bose sound dock in the corner, Bob Dylan was wailing softly.

“Knock, knock,” Cara said from the doorway.

Her mother swung around. She wore a hooded gray IU sweatshirt and sweatpants, black reading glasses perched at the edge of her nose. There was a smear of red pen on her chin. “Oh hi, honey,” she said. “How was the meet?”

“Good, actually.” Cara grinned. “I came in second.” She took a step into the room and perched on the worn arm of a green velour armchair.

“Uh-hmm. Listen, honey, I wanted to talk to you about something.” Mom’s voice dropped. She took off her glasses.

“What?” Cara crossed her arms over her chest.

Mom tapped a pen on the desk. “It’s nothing really. Earlier in the week when I was passing your room, I just heard you . . . talking to yourself.” She cleared her throat.

Heat rushed to Cara’s face. She’d heard her talking to Zoe. She walked over to the bookcase and studied the titles. “Mom, was it at night?” Her voice sounded calm. “Because you know I talk in my sleep.” Evidence, Second Edition, she read.

“Yes . . . I remember that.” Cara heard a creak as Mom shifted her weight in the chair. “I was wondering if the, er, passing of Sydney had . . . upset you.” She seemed to be choosing her words with unusual care.

Cara let out a breath. Her mom didn’t suspect Zoe. “Yeah. Um, it’s been kind of weird at school. I think a lot of people are upset.” She patted her mother on the shoulder. “But I’m cool. Thanks for asking.”

“Oh, good.” Mom sounded relieved. She picked up her sheaf of legal papers. “I overheard Chief Rangleif down at the courthouse today. Apparently, they’re still investigating Sydney’s death.”

Cara frowned. “What’s there to investigate? She was drunk and fell in the pool.”

Her mother shook her head. “I didn’t catch everything he was saying, but apparently the investigation isn’t closed. That’s all I know.” Her eyes drifted back to the papers. She picked up a highlighter and ran it across a line. “Leftover Chinese in the fridge.”

Cara stood a moment longer, gazing at the back of her mother’s bent head, then turned and slowly trailed out of the room.

After extracting the carton of shrimp lo mein, Cara climbed the stairs, sticking a fork into the slippery noodles. Samson, who had a lifelong obsession with soy sauce, followed. Cara breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her bedroom door firmly shut. She didn’t know what she was worried about—maybe that Zoe would’ve left. Cara didn’t think she could stand that. It had only been a week, but already she was back to depending on Zoe. Before she did anything, she needed to know what she thought. Just like when they were little. When she’d open presents at her birthday parties, her first thought was always if Zoe would like the toy or book inside. If Zoe didn’t approve of something, Cara would throw it away.

Cara twisted the knob and pushed open the door. Zoe was sitting on the floor, her back against Cara’s bed, a magazine propped on her knees. She looked up with a huge smile. “Hey, you’re home!” She jumped up and gave Cara a big sloppy kiss on the cheek.

Cara grinned. Samson nudged her foot, trying to slip past her into the room. “No,” she told him and shoved him back.

“Wait, who’s this?” Zoe looked down. “Aw, you didn’t tell me you had a cat. Hi, cutie.” Samson twitched his tail back and forth, and Zoe scooped him up, cradling him like a baby. The cat’s belly hung to one side. He grunted.

Cara grimaced. “He’s my mother’s. And he’s not cute, he’s fat and smelly and he sheds on everything. My mother loves him though. More than me, I think.”

“Well, duh!” Zoe laughed at the stricken look on Cara’s face and tenderly set Samson on his feet in the hall. “Night-night, bunny,” she crooned.

She plopped down on the striped comforter and tugged Cara down next to her. “So, what happened today? I’ve been so bored. You have to tell me everything. How was the meet?”

Cara sank back on the pillows and tucked a hand behind her head. “Well, first of all, guess what Mom just told me?”

“What?”

“The police are still investigating Sydney’s death.” She widened her eyes at Zoe dramatically.

Zoe’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “What are they investigating? Drunk people drown all the time.”

“I know.” Cara shrugged. “Maybe she hit her head or something. I don’t know. Her parents could sue the pool manufacturers.”

“Okay, so tell me about today!” Zoe changed the subject. “You looked really happy when you came in, so good things must have happened.”

“Oh, they did. The meet was awesome.” Cara recounted her unexpected second-place finish and the congratulations from her teammates, concluding with her botched hand-slap with Ethan. “So, what do you think? Do you think he thinks I’m an idiot who can’t even high-five someone?”

Zoe pursed her mouth, thinking. “You said he smiled after you missed his hand?”

“Yeah. What? Is that good? Or bad? Is it bad?” She waited anxiously.

Zoe tapped her fingertip on her cheek. “Nooo, I don’t think it’s bad. Actually, he might be thinking you’re cute, in a kind of innocent way.” She studied Cara a moment. “You know, maybe you’d feel more confident with Ethan if you did something different with your hair. Have you ever thought about that?”

Cara touched her ponytail. “Well, sometimes. I mean, plain brown hair is kind of boring. But I don’t know what to do with it.”

Zoe sat up suddenly. “Here, let me see your hair.” Zoe reached out for her, her long fingernails grazing Cara’s neck. Instinctively Cara pulled away.

Zoe looked wounded. “You were always pulling away from me, you know that? Ever since we were little. Maybe that’s why you abandoned me.” She eyed Cara.

“What are you talking about? We moved!”

“Well, you left me, and my life was awful. You knew it too.” Zoe laid her head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling.

Cara felt her pulse speed up. “It wasn’t easy for me either, you know. I was so upset about losing you, my parents made me talk to someone when we first moved here. I felt like you’d abandoned me.”

“Oh yeah, and are you still seeing the guy now?”

“No . . . I felt better once I got adjusted to living here.” Cara shifted. She felt almost guilty, though she knew she shouldn’t. It had been her parents’ decision to move, not hers. Besides, she’d written Zoe a few letters. She’d just sort of stopped after a while. But it wasn’t like she’d forgotten about her friend completely. It was just that it was the “good period” then, and she was busy with her parents and building a new life. . . .

Instead of replying, Zoe reached over and pulled out Cara’s hair band. Her lank brown locks fell around her shoulders. Her hair had gotten really long in the last year, and now it reached almost to the bottom of her shoulder blades.

Zoe tucked the ends under and leaned back, squinting at Cara. Standing so close, Cara could feel the heat coming off Zoe’s body. “That’s sort of it . . . ,” Zoe said. She fluffed the top layer and held the bottom back behind Cara’s neck.

“I’m in your hands,” Cara said.

Zoe squealed. “Really? Can I do anything I want?”

Cara nodded. “Yeah. It can’t get any worse, right?”

Zoe clapped her hands. “Makeover! Oh my God, this is going to be so fun.” She bounded over to Cara’s laptop on the desk. “Okay, first thing, and most important—makeover music.” She scrolled through the iTunes list.

Cara climbed off the bed and opened the cabinet under the bathroom sink. “What supplies do you need?” she called.

“Scissors, a mirror, a flatiron, and the blow-dryer,” Zoe called over her shoulder. “Madonna! Perfect.” “Like a Virgin” filled the room. “Like a virgin, touched for the very first time,” Madonna sang.

Oh, perfect for me, Cara thought as she extracted the flatiron from the back of the sink cabinet. “My parents are going to think I’ve turned into someone else,” she said. “I hardly ever listen to that one.”

“They won’t come up here, will they?” Zoe sounded a little worried. She turned the music down a notch.

Cara tugged the flatiron hard from the cabinet, knocking over several shampoo bottles in the process. “No, don’t worry,” she called back, spitting her hair from her face. “My mom actually heard us the other day—but she thinks I’m talking in my sleep. Anyway, she’s more than happy buried in her office downstairs.” She rose to her feet and blew some dust off the flatiron. “Here.” She handed it to Zoe. “I haven’t used it in, um, maybe ever. And look, I even found a mascara and some lip gloss. They’re probably a hundred years old.”

“Okay, then this is the start of your new life.” Zoe arranged Cara in front of her dresser mirror and spread a towel over her shoulders. She poised a pair of scissors.

“Wait!” Cara clutched at her friend’s hand. “You’re going to cut it dry?”

“Of course. That’s what all the top stylists do.” Zoe sounded supremely confident. She easily broke her hand from Cara’s grasp. “You’ll look great with a buzz cut. I’ll just get some clippers—”

“What!”

Zoe laughed. “Kidding! Now, shut up and relax. It’s going to be amazing.”

Cara closed her eyes as Zoe snipped a lock of hair at the back. She was going fast. The chunks of hair falling to the floor felt ominously heavy, but Cara refused to open her eyes. She heard Zoe put the scissors down and the cold mist of spray on her head. Then Zoe’s firm fingers fluffing her hair, and the click as the flatiron warmed up. “Even though you have straight hair, the iron will get rid of all that frizz and make it shiny,” Zoe said as she closed the hot plates on a section of hair.

“Ah! It’s hot!” Cara gasped, squeezing her eyes, still tightly shut. She smelled the acrid stench of burning hair. “Oh God, don’t burn my hair off, Zoe,” she begged.

“Sorry, sorry! I’m turning it down,” Zoe said. She methodically moved around Cara’s head. After a few more minutes, she drew the iron away. “Okay, that’s it. Open.”

Cara opened her eyes. There in the mirror was a girl with a plain, pale face like her own, but now capped with a rough, messy bob. It was kind of rocker-girl cool. She turned her head slowly. “Wow,” she said. Zoe had even managed to make the top look fuller. Long bangs were sideswept across her forehead.

“Wait, wait! This is the finishing touch.” Zoe leaned over and applied a light coat of mascara to Cara’s stick-straight lashes and a dot of berry lip gloss. “Just a little. You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard.”

Cara got up from the chair slowly. “Zo, this is amazing. I never knew my hair could look like this.”

Zoe beamed. “I know, right? You’re just like Kristen Stewart.” She bent over the magazine she’d been looking at when Cara came in and flipped the wrinkled pages. “There, see?”

Cara peered over her shoulder. Kristen was standing on a red carpet in a long navy silk dress, turned to one side, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yeah, you’re right.” There was a vague resemblance between the actress’s big dark eyes and delicate cheekbones and her own.

Zoe jumped up. “But the clothes . . .” She flung open Cara’s closet.

Cara looked down at her faded bathrobe. “What about my clothes?”

“Cara.” Zoe spoke patiently as if addressing someone with limited intelligence. “You can’t go around with that awesome new haircut wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt.”

“I like that sweatshirt,” Cara mumbled.

“I know,” Zoe said soothingly. “It’s a relic. But, Car, we have to do something about your clothes. Come on, don’t you have anything else in here?” She pawed past three years of track T-shirts, a pilly black cotton turtleneck, four hooded cotton sweatshirts in various shades of gray. “You’re a fan of variety, apparently.” Zoe eyed the sweatshirts before pulling a clingy green top from the back. Tags dangled under the sleeve. “Ah-hah! What’s this?”

Cara winced. “Oh God, that’s nothing. Something Mom found on sale. She goes on these shopping rampages, trying to fix me up. I’ve never worn it.”

Zoe tossed it into her lap. “You’re wearing it now. And these.” She held up Cara’s best black ballet flats.

Cara hesitated and then yanked her sweatshirt over her head, mussing her new haircut. “I’m going to feel weird wearing this to school.” Zoe tossed her a pair of dark skinny jeans, and she pulled them on. “What do you think?” The fabric of the shirt clung, outlining her chest and abdomen. The draped neck showed off her collarbone, which Cara always found embarrassingly prominent, like a coat hanger.

Zoe perused her, looking Cara up and down, as if she were a livestock buyer examining a prime steer at auction. Cara crossed her arms in front of her, oddly self-conscious. “Maybe if you stood up straighter, and kept your chin up more.” She stood up and struck a pose in front of the mirror—shoulders thrown back, hands on her hips. She turned her head and eyed Cara coolly. “Come on, try it.”

Cara got up from her stool reluctantly. She stood next to Zoe, her arms hanging limply at her sides. “I feel stupid,” she said.

Zoe grabbed her arms as though they were strands of spaghetti and shook them. “Come on! Look, this will help you around Ethan. Now try it.” She posed again, and Cara put her own hands on her hips, mimicking her.

“Shoulders back,” Zoe instructed. “Now hips out a little more. InStyle says you can look five pounds lighter that way.”

Cara arranged her body in the required posture. She looked at herself in the mirror. Zoe stood next to her, and for the first time, Cara realized they were exactly the same height and weight. With their dark hair and light eyes, they looked like two mirror images standing there.

“Okay, now repeat after me,” Zoe said. “‘Hi, Ethan.’” Her voice was airy and smooth.

“Hi, Ethan,” Cara repeated obediently.

“No, no. Like you don’t care,” Zoe told her. “And keep your shoulders back. Like this.” She demonstrated.

Cara straightened her spine. “Hi, Ethan.” She tried a breezy little smile.

“That’s better! Okay, now try this: ‘Great meet yesterday.’”

Cara repeated her line. She raised her eyebrows at Zoe in the mirror hopefully.

Zoe furrowed her brow. “You’re almost getting it. But something’s not quite right. Here, say it with me: ‘Hi, Ethan. Great meet yesterday.’”

Cara repeated the words along with Zoe.

“Again!” Zoe instructed.

Over and over, they said the sentence together, gazing into the mirror. Cara’s voice blended with Zoe’s until she couldn’t tell whether she was speaking or Zoe was.