“Tsss, burn,” Vanessa hissed, nodding in approval. “The girl is cuttin’ glass!”
Gabrielle threw an I-told-you-so smirk over her shoulder, her long blond waves slicing through the air. “That twat better pray she don’t get gang raped in the parking lot.”
The girls giggled and Maddie felt like she was wading through a shower of shattered glass. She knew they loved nothing more than a good laugh, especially if it was the punch line to humiliating someone. Self-righteousness buoyed them so they walked on air, and Maddie felt their stride accelerate, as powerful as the engines of the Grudder Wildcats that flew in formation over the island every Fourth of July.
She tried to imagine what people saw. Girls? Women? Young ladies? Wasn’t that what her grandmother’s friends at the club called her? What a fine young lady. But there’d been rumors flying around the corridors of East High that spring—Bitsy Smith and her clique were wild girls. Fun girls. Up for a good time.
Maddie watched Bitsy prance ahead, her flawlessly straight hair swinging in time with her swiveling hips. Swish, swish, swish. Like the mane of Smith’s Farragut, the champion horse Bitsy rode in shows, named for the first admiral in the navy, whose life story Maddie and all the island kids had memorized in grade school. Gabrielle, second in command, was the curviest, and Maddie was sure she saw Gabrielle’s lacy underwear through her snug white shorts. Vanessa, Bitsy’s unofficial bodyguard, was sporting newly filled-out breasts aided by a push-up bra she’d bragged about lifting from Victoria’s Secret. And finally, there was Penny, Maddie’s best friend, who, Maddie thought, desperately needed a bra to shape the two mounds hanging loose under her Izod button-down.
Their bodies were no longer childish. Still, Maddie needed to think of them as girls. She wasn’t ready for what came next, whatever it was, but there was a fever in the air, hovering above the rattle of the popcorn machine and the shudder of the Zipper careening over old rails. She heard the sizzle of a sparkler; then a balloon popped with a crack and the crowd whooped and a child gasped; and, suddenly, Maddie believed in hearts leaping and swelling, breaking and exploding. Scenarios she’d come to long for after watching videos on MTV and listening to love ballads DJ Spinbad played on Z100.3. When Whitney Houston hit those yearning-filled high notes in “I Will Always Love You” (every other hour it seemed), Maddie turned up the radio, rolled her car windows down, lit a Kent King 100 she’d stolen from her grandmother’s pantry, put the pedal to the metal, and sang along, free from the fear that she might embarrass herself.
As the pulsing bass of the fair’s most popular ride, the Gravitron, soaked into the soles of her sandals, slithered up her calves, her thighs, and reached inside her, she believed something was on its way. How could she not? She was young and beautiful—or, at least, pretty enough, she thought—at a time in life when being young and beautiful seemed like the answer to everything.
The girls passed game after game—ringtoss and Whac-A-Mole and darts and, Maddie’s favorite, the one where you shot water from a plastic pistol into a balloon that stretched and stretched, then burst with a splash. But there was no stopping without Bitsy’s permission, and who wanted any of those junky prizes anyway—the sad-eyed stuffed panda bears as big as golden retrievers Maddie had longed for as a child, or the lethargic goldfish scooped from a tank. The fish never lasted more than a day.
She’d prepared for the fair. Ironed her jean skirt, double-shaved her legs, used Nair to remove the downy fur on her upper lip. She cleaned out the bottom drawer in the fridge, took the lemons her dad stuffed in his roast chicken, and, man, would he be pissed when he found out. She’d squeezed one after another over her long brown hair and lay out to tan on a faded bath towel spread over the hard asphalt of the driveway, praying the juice turned her hair buttery with highlights. Who cared that it wasn’t technically summer? Or that her skin prickled in the wind gusting in from the Sound? Bitsy, miraculously, had been tan for weeks, her hair striped blond, so she glowed like the sunset that burned along shore each night.
Maddie had been tempted to buy a bottle of Sun In at Genovese Drug Store but feared the peroxide spray could turn her hair a garish copper. Last week, Bitsy had ripped Penny a new one when she showed up on the last day of school a freakish bronze from one of those tan-in-a-bottle creams. The skin between her fingers as brown as mud. Vanessa had teased Penny all week, using the few words of Spanish she knew. Hola, Miss Penelope! Her fake accent and rolling r’s making Maddie glance around to see if anyone had heard.
“Patience is a virtue,” Bitsy had said to Penny in a motherly tone, then added, “Think before you fucking do, dumdum, ’kay?”
Gliding through life as a member of Bitsy’s pack was like riding a roller coaster for the first time—every dip and swerve thrilling but also gut-flipping, so Maddie didn’t know if the girls might praise her one minute (Oh my God, Maddie, how’d you get your hair to shine like that?) and knock her down the next (Too bad your dad, like, gave you his Eye-talian skin—have you tried Clearasil?).
At least, Maddie thought, she didn’t worship Bitsy blindly like Penny did. As they strode past the Captain’s Ship, the screams of its passengers rising as the ride arced into the night sky, she spotted Penny biting into a fried zeppole ball—her mouth a smear of frosted lip gloss and powdered sugar; the thin white-blond hair Maddie had straightened before the fair already crimping.
“Quit messing with your hair, Pen,” Maddie whispered as they paraded past food carts selling slick pizza slices and heroes spilling ribbons of beef.
“What?” Penny lifted her greasy fingers to her hair.
“Forget it.”
Penny stuck her tongue out at Maddie before taking another bite of the sugary dough.
That night, Penny’s parents, Major and Mrs. Whittemore, had been out of the house, knocking back martinis and manhattans at the Oyster Cove Country Club cocktail hour—their Saturday-night ritual. So Maddie and Penny had blasted “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the major’s stereo, screaming the chorus until the nonsensical lyrics had felt like a prayer. A command sent out to the world to listen the fuck up. Here we are now, entertain us/ A mulatto/ An albino/ A mosquito/ My libido/ Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!