Page 34 of The Starfish Sisters

“My treat,” I said. “Both of you.”

Phoebe

Joel had the shiniest, longest hair I’d ever seen on a boy. It fell like a satin curtain over his shoulders. Light sank into it and glowed outward. My fingers itched to feel it. He did have acne, like Suze told me, but it didn’t take away from him much. His dark eyes rested on my face easily, as if he liked it, and I felt something in me open, expand. His hand gave me a zing, and when I would have let go, he hung on.

Then Suze was between us and we were in the movie with popcorn and root beer and the movie was starting. It was so intense and made me cry hard, and when we stumbled out into the dark, rainy afternoon, I felt hollowed out. “That was rough.”

All three of us were quiet, walking side by side. We stopped in the candy store and got a bunch of penny candies, and then without even talking about it, we took the trail to our house on the hill. I let us in by the lower window, and we carried our stash upstairs to the kitchen, which looked out over the water. Joel sat beside me. “Did you ever live on a reservation?” I asked. “Like the kids in the movie?”

He shook his head, lips downturned. “We lived in Seattle and Portland before here,” he said.

“I live in Portland.”

He gives me a half grin. “I heard that.”

Blushing, I bowed my head, wanting to sink through the floor.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you blush,” he said, and I blushed even worse.

“I hate this!” I said, pressing my hands over my face to hide it.

Suze said, “Phoebe, it’s okay. You look cute when you blush.” She peeled a red licorice string out of the package and gave me one. “You can’t blush and eat at the same time.”

With her hair loose, so long it piled on the floor next to her, and the soft peasant blouse that was ever so faintly see-through, and her jeans, shedidn’t look like my Suze. She was beautiful, almost too beautiful, like a model or something. It made me feel weird and I didn’t know if I liked it.

Which gave me a sense of shame. Did I want her to have to wear horrible clothes and keep her silly braids in all the time? No.

Except—maybe one of the things that united us was the way we were both misfits. If she wasn’t a misfit, would she even like me anymore?

We talked about the movie. “It was supposed to be about peace, but it was really violent,” Joel said, lighting a cigarette. He stood up to open a window and sat on the sill, letting the smoke get sucked out.

“You’re right,” Suze said. “But how can you be peaceful if everybody else is violent?”

I was haunted by a scene of the kids in the diner getting flour poured on their heads. It was so humiliating.

“Gandhi did it,” Joel said.

“But this is America,” I said, lured by argument. My dad loved to debate, and so did my mother, and they loved getting into these deep back-and-forthings. Not their fighting, but the way they talked about ideas. “America, my dad says, takes revolution and sells it back to you for a dollar ninety-nine.”

Joel cracked up. “That’s good.”

“He’s a professor,” I said, proud.

“Fancy,” Joel commented.

“Not really.”

“Phoebe likes to pretend she’s not rich,” Suze said, something pointed in her tone, “but she is.”

I looked at her with a frown. “That was a mean thing to say.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said nonchalantly. “It’s just a fact.”

It still stung. She was making us different. “We aren’t rich.”

“You have a swimming pool,” Suze said. “You’re wearing a cashmere sweater.”

Again my ears burned. She was right. “You should see what some of the girls in my school wear. Where they live.”