Hothouse

“I mean, don’t you ever think about shaving your head?” I ask, hugging my knees to my chest on the fitting room bench. 

Margaret looks at me through the mirror. A brief glance, then back to the dress she pulls over her chest. 

“No. Not really. Zip?” She sweeps her hair to one side. 

I stand up, wiping my palms on the sides of my school skirt before touching her. The zipper glides smoothly, like a knife slicing through butter. 

I wish I didn’t say the shaving your head thing. My insides feel cold and cavernous. It happens when I say something to someone and they let it fall to the floor and shrivel up like a rotten piece of fruit. 

“I just mean like, I get tired of washing it…sometimes,” I say, though she doesn’t seem to hear. 

Margaret turns around and looks over one shoulder at the mirror, studying the way the dress drapes around her ankles. “I think I like the first one better.” 

“Me too.” 

She asks me to unzip the dress and I do, the fabric slowly unfurling, revealing her pure skin underneath it. When the dress falls to the floor around her bare feet, she turns to me in her bra and underwear, arms crossed in front of her. 

“Do you really like it better or did you just say that because I like it better?”

I don’t look at her, just at the abandoned dress lying on the floor like an animal’s carcass. “No, I do.” I mumble. But her eyes continue to bore into me, and I know what she really wants to say is, Do you want me to look ugly, Zoe? 

“Seriously,” I say, looking her in the eye. 

“Okay.” 

I stand, smoothing my palms over my shirt, making little progress at removing the wrinkles. 

“Zoe,” She says, looking at me through mascara coated lashes. “You look so pretty today.” 

I smile. 

This is our currency. 

While I try on my dress, Margaret waits outside. The truth is, I savor these moments. Moments of pure vanity, everything else turning to distant buzzing. An embarrassing relief flows through me as I admire my reflection in the big mirror. As I undress, I take note of my most satisfactory features. My strawberry lips painted red, my dark hair cut short like a French academic’s, my ballerina bones delicate, drinking up the spotlight. I pull the silky olive fabric over my skin, and it drapes over me like a Grecian tunic. 

Margaret’s probably stretched out across the chaise lounge in the hall, feet up on the cushion, smiling at her phone as she texts Lorenzo. The thought of it makes my chest go red and blotchy in the mirror. It always surprises me how quickly I can be filled with hatred toward her, but also how quickly any animosity toward her vanishes. Just last night we lay in her bed, lights off, an overwhelming tenderness for her crashing over me as she laughed about the way I had pronounced “Yosemite.” I accidently said it like yo-sim-might. I had the urge to hug her in that moment, protect her, maybe. It’s like an uncontrollable spouting of platonic love, trying to take shape somewhere before it ultimately spills to the floor. Now I just picture her face and it irks me. 

A subtle nausea pulls at me as I zip up the dress. I look like a lifeless statue. The more I stare, my facial features start to look distorted. It happens sometimes when I look in the mirror too long, taking note of the good and bad. I tip-toe bare-footed toward my reflection, getting so close I start to look a little blurry, my eyes crossing, my nose and mouth looking like puzzle pieces in the wrong places. My nose is a little too wide with blackheads festering in the top layer of skin, coated with an unflattering sheen from the humidity outside. It’s disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. 

I unzip the dress, letting it puddle around my feet. And I think about wearing last year’s formal dress that’s collecting dust at the back of my closet, and letting Lorenzo rake his blasphemous eyes over me as he flirts with Margaret and she twirls her hair and asks, does anyone want a drink? 

Don’t worry, I don’t do any of that. Obviously not. I buy the dress. And God, do I look good in it. 

… 

Margaret and I lay out on a checkered picnic blanket in her backyard, the earth cradling our heads, our hands groping the manicured grass. The air is hot and wet, like we are lodged

under God’s tongue. Margaret breathes steadily next to me, shielding her eyes from the relentless sun with her arm as she scrolls through her phone. 

“You look so pretty today,” I say. The afternoon light gives her skin a subtle glow. She turns to me briefly, smiles. “Thank you, my love.” Then back to her phone. Her thumbs swiftly move over her keyboard. 

“Who are you texting?” I ask, though I already know the answer. 

“Lorenzo.” 

A bitter silence fills the air. 

“What?” She turns to me, her eyes squinty. Because silence must mean something poisonous, something that kills girls like us slowly and painfully. 

I think of that day at the pool party, Lorenzo sitting next to me at the edge of the water, sweat beading on the back of his neck. 

“Why don’t you ever talk to anybody? It’s supposed to be a party,” he said, a boyish grin taking over his features. I wasn’t used to him talking to me, though sometimes I’d find his eyes on me at school. 

“I don’t like to talk.” 

“You’re interesting, you know,” he said before looking down at my lips, like it was some revelation he was having. I didn’t say anything back, just dove in the pool, letting the cool water fold around me, cleansing me of…what? Something revolting, something intriguing. “Nothing,” I say. 

We’re quiet until Margaret’s mother brings us a bowl of fruit. Cantaloupe and pineapple, cut up in perfect cubes. I eat it with my face still looking to the sky, pineapple juice dripping down the side of my cheek, down my neck. I let it dry there and get sticky in that irritating way. I don’t know why I do it. 

I turn on to my belly, propping myself up with my elbows. “Margaret?” 

“Hmm?” 

“How would you want to die?” 

She doesn’t question me, merely sets her phone down and looks at the tree canopies, probably narrowing down her answer in her mind. This is a game we sometimes play. “Maybe beheading.” 

I thought she’d say that. “But you know you can stay conscious for like twenty seconds after,” I say, picking the last piece of fruit from the bowl. “Anne Boleyn’s eyes kept twitching around after her head hit the ground, apparently. Something about adrenaline and oxygen rushing to your brain when the scythe hits the back of your neck.” 

I feel a slight breeze flutter through my hair. 

She sits up, shrugs. “Yeah. But, I don’t know. I think I might like seeing everybody’s reactions.” 

I laugh. I don’t really find it funny, though. I picture myself kneeling on the scaffold, the look of horror rippling through the crowd as blood splatters their faces. “That’s sick.” “Maybe,” she smiles. “What would you choose, old age?” 

“No. I don’t know.” 

“I want it to be memorable,” Margaret says, and that makes me feel a little sick, too. I sit up, crossing my legs how they make you in elementary school. “I think I’d rather disappear. You know, die out in the woods. And they’d find my skeleton at the bottom of some lake.”

“That’s a little depressing,” she laughs. 

“I don’t think so.” I run my fingers over my bare knees, feeling the hair starting to get prickly. “I think it’s freedom.” 

The birds sing in the silence. I don’t look at her, but I feel her eyes on me. “What do you mean?” 

And I don’t want to tell her that all of us girls belong to someone else. We belong to something else. My silk dress is reserved for the eyes of others. The way I’ll hold myself at the dance tomorrow night, taking delicate sips from my drink, swaying gently to the song playing like everybody is watching. I won’t be able to help it. 

“I don’t know,” I answer, resuming my horizontal position, face to the sky, eyes closed. … 

It’s fifteen degrees warmer at the center of the dance floor even though the school counselor turned the thermostat down to 65. And I want to feel high from the dancing and the music and the sweat, but I just feel claustrophobic. 

Margaret took her shoes off and now holds her hair in a makeshift ponytail as she sways to the trap song. The hair she so carefully straightened a few hours ago, curling up at the nape of her neck from the damp air. 

Lorenzo finds his way beside me, as he has all night. I try to avoid him but simultaneously feel his eyes on me like a weighted blanket. His attention feels threatening and I don’t know where to put it.

“It’s hot,” he says, his black hair damp and stringy on his forehead. 

I nod, telling him, I know. He takes my hand and leads me through sweaty bodies out into the hallway. We lean against the wall, the cement smooth and cold and refreshing against our backs. As we sit in the quiet, I try to picture myself the way Lorenzo must see me. Are my lips chapped beneath my faded lipstick? Does my skin look glowy from the heat? I lick my lips then, wiping the back of my hand over my mouth to get rid of the last of the pigment. 

He pulls out his father’s flask and I take a sip. Whatever’s inside burns as it goes down my throat and warmth blooms across my chest. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asks. He’s so close, it makes my heart beat fast, it makes me feel like I might throw up. 

“Aren’t you gonna dance with Margaret?” 

He laughs. “No. What are you really thinking about?” 

I look at the white tiles on the floor. “I’m wondering what it is you like about me.” But it’s not true. Really I’m wondering what happens to me if he looks away, if I’ll disintegrate, disappear. If I exist without his eyes on me. 

Slowly, I feel his presence closing in on me. He pushes a strand of hair behind my ear, his coffee black eyes looking into mine like it’s supposed to mean something. His gaze is soft, like a child’s, and I picture what he must have been like as a little boy. 

He smiles, “Well, firstly, I think you’re beautiful. I mean, you’re the prettiest girl in the whole school.” 

I expect to feel relieved, but I don’t. 

From this close, I can see the peach fuzz growing on his upper lip, trying its best to become a real mustache but getting stuck in this unflattering in-between.

Then he kisses me. Boyish, wet. When I mechanically pull away, he doesn’t know what to say. He just stares. I picture his fingerprints all over me, all over my brand new dress. 

… 

“My brain feels like, slow,” I say, “like I’m underwater.” 

I’m all but engulfed in Margaret’s decadent, pillowy duvet. I turn towards her and she crawls in beside me like a little kid. 

“Me too,” she says, her words muffled by her face in a pillow. Lamplight paints her bedroom with a soft glow. 

After the dance, Margaret dragged me to an after party. Everyone who was at the dance seemed to be there too. I polluted my body with some strange, unidentifiable juice and disappeared in the smoky realm of bodies. I didn’t see Lorenzo for the rest of the night. 

Now the edges of my gaze are softened by the alcohol, Margaret’s blond hair softly glowing beneath the lamp light. I study her face, her smudged makeup, the dull droopy look of her under eyes. For a second, my insides feel cavernous when I think of Lorenzo’s callused fingers on my cheek, his sweaty forehead under the fluorescents. But it’s not so bad this time. Like this cavity is only a clearing of space, clean and made for something new to fill it. 

Margaret’s eyes fight to stay open. Her blinking is slow like honey dripping. “You look horrendous,” I say. 

She giggles, slamming a pillow over my head. “Look who’s talking.” 

“True.”

“Here,” she says. And she leans over to her nightstand, and flicks off the lamp, leaving us in the dark.“That’s better.” 

The moon is covered by the clouds, so no external light seeps through the curtains. I could not blink Margaret into visibility if I tried. She’s a snuggly sleeper, already draping her arm over me and drifting away. And I can’t see her limbs, or mine, but I know they tangle together. The only thing left is the quiet beat of our hearts filling up the night.