Gioia and Odette meet in the girl’s bathroom near the science classrooms. Gioia lights a cigarette, her thumb still clumsy and hesitant on the flint wheel, while Odette approaches the cleanest mirror and pulls out a pair of tweezers from her pocket.
“Did you see Arden’s outfit this morning?” Odette asks, pulling out two thick eyebrow hairs in one pluck.
“Horrible.” Gioia coughs, a thin veil of smoke crawling out of her mouth.
Gioia hasn’t seen the outfit, but she doesn’t need to. Last week, Gioia and Odette decided they didn’t like Arden. She’s one of those girls with a perfect life, who’s wealthy and always smiling. She’s one of those girls everyone adores—teachers, peers, parents. Universal admiration makes for poor character. Someone has to dislike you. There are plenty of people who don’t like Gioia and Odette.
Odette looks closer at her reflection in the mirror. She spends a lot of time assessing her features—the too-wide nose, the too-small chin, the smattering of freckles across her cheeks. Her eyebrows are getting too thin, but she can’t resist the deliciously sharp pain of the pluck. She enjoys sulking in her own created despair, meting out self-inflicted punishments she’s decided she deserves.
She plucks a single hair from the widening space between her brows. A current like an electrical zap runs through her nerves and her arm hairs stand at attention. She nicked some skin that time. As she presses a finger against the dot of blood, she eyes Gioia, who exhales a long stream of smoke.
“You’re going to set off the fire alarm,” Odette tells Gioia.
“Who cares?” Gioia shrugs. “It’s not like my mom’s driving down here for another meeting with the principal.”
Gioia’s mom works nights at a bar and spends her days at home either asleep or on the couch watching reruns of Sex and the City. The school counselor reminds Gioia on a too-frequent basis that she is the apple, her mom is the tree, and it’s up to her how far she falls. Gioia imagines a bruised green apple, desperate to roll away from the tree but incapable of moving.
“Mine might,” Odette says.
“You think so?”
“No.” Odette shakes her head.
Odette’s parents are getting a divorce. For the last six months, her parents’ sole focus has been equally dividing valuables—the BMW, the cutlery, the credit card with ten thousand miles; everything but Odette.
Gioia takes one last drag, inhales slowly. As she exhales, she lifts her chin, launches smoke like a cannon, and watches it float towards the smoke detector.
*
Gioia and Odette almost look like sisters if you don’t concentrate too hard, which most people don’t. The cashier at CVS tells them they should treasure these years.
“I have a sister, only I haven’t spoken to her in ten years because of an argument. And you know what? I don’t even remember what we were fighting about,” the cashier says. She’s a sad-looking woman with dark purple half-moons under her eyes and wiry gray hairs that refuse to play nice with her dark brown locks.
“We’ll never stop talking to each other,” Gioia chirps, and Odette leans her head against Gioia’s shoulder.
They play along with the cashier, but they know it’s better to be friends than family.
“You can’t choose your family, which is why everyone hates each other,” Gioia says, pulling a chip from the Doritos bag. “When I’m eighteen, I'm never talking to my mom again.”
Odette nods. She agrees with the theory, even if it doesn’t explain what happened to her parents. They had chosen each other once, and now they had changed their mind.
“You and I are different.” Gioia smiles.
Sometimes, it’s like Gioia can read Odette’s mind.
Odette tugs a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker out of her pocket. She’d slipped it into her jeans when Gioia was talking to the CVS lady.
“Got you something,” she says, and tosses the lip balm to Gioia. It’s Gioia’s favorite flavor: Dr. Pepper. She loves the faint red stain it leaves on her lips, the cherry scent with a spicy bite.
Gioia and Odette liken themselves to Aladdin, from their favorite Disney movie when they were kids. They stole out of necessity. Never anything extravagant; just the essentials, just enough to survive. Neither of them has a job, Gioia’s mom never has cash to spare, and all of Odette’s parents’ money is going to the divorce lawyers.
The CVS manager comes outside to remind them of the sign: NO LOITERING.
“Go home already and stop squatting at a drugstore,” he says, his hands swatting the air.
“Calm your nuts, Steve.” Gioia rolls her eyes. “We’re going.”
Steve is always harassing them. It’s annoying because, even though he’s only a few years older than them, he thinks he can boss them around like every other adult. He’s barely 21 years old, and he still lives at home while attending community college part-time. Other than legally purchasing beer, there’s nothing he knows about life that Gioia and Odette haven’t already figured out.
Gioia and Odette walk through the strip mall, NO LOITERING signs hammered to the stucco walls every hundred feet. Their bodies are used to walking long distances. They spend afternoons after school walking anywhere but home. To CVS. The skate park. The Sam Goody with the STORE CLOSING sign.
Today, they walk to the park and collapse into the hard earth, the grass anemic from the drought, and play Life Lines. They invented it a few years ago, and it’s still their favorite game. It passes the time, doesn’t cost a thing, and gives them an excuse to fantasize about a future they otherwise couldn’t imagine.
“You will meet a tall, rich stranger,” Gioia starts, her finger gliding down Odette’s open palm. “You’ll live in a gigantic mansion and have three dogs and go to Spain every summer.”
Odette inspects Gioia’s palm and tells her she, too, will meet a tall, rich stranger. Only this one will take her to Japan, to Hawaii, to Greece. They’ll eat lobster for dinner, tiramisu for dessert.
“And you’ll only be 22, so you’re not ugly and wrinkly with boobs down to your knees and a butt like a dried apricot,” Odette says.
Their predictions are always the same, but it excites them every time.
“Any day now,” they reassure each other. Soon, someone will notice them and take them away from here.
*
Gioia and Odette wait outside the grocery store. Not the one closest to their house, but the supermarket downtown, near the state university. It’s busier, making it easier to blend in and avoid the attention of store managers or police or nosy old ladies who love to tell them to put some clothes on.
Gioia takes a drag from her cigarette. Her third of the day. Odette’s been counting.
“No one smokes cigarettes anymore. You’re going to become one of those ladies with a hole in her throat,” Odette says.
“What are you, a doctor? It’s safer than that acid you took last week.”
Odette rolls her eyes. It was a one-time experiment. The tiny square of paper looked harmless: gossamer thin and pale pink, just like the curtains hanging in her bedroom window. It dissolved almost instantly under her tongue. Odette waited for something to happen—an epiphany, a spiritual awakening, for every inch of her body to vibrate with emotion—but it only made her feel like she had the flu, sweaty and irritated with that empty-stomach nausea.
“Stop being so moody,” Gioia says. She pinches Odette’s arm and kisses her cheek.
Odette smiles and presses her cheek, damp from Gioia’s chapstick-waxy kiss, against her shoulder, as if to preserve the kiss forever, like pressing flowers in a journal.
Odette can never stay mad at Gioia, which is part of her frustration. Recently, she’s noticed how muscular and taught Gioia’s legs are; the delicacy of her collarbones; her small ears. Odette wants to reach out and press her fingers against the sharp edge of Gioia’s collarbone. She doesn’t know what this means, incapable of distinguishing jealousy from admiration from sexual attraction.
Gioia is prettier than Odette, with her shiny, bouncy hair and full lips. Odette’s nose is too big for her face, her eyes round as globes, and her hair frizzy and wavy. Even though Odette is smarter than Gioia, it doesn’t matter. No one cares, especially when no one wants to listen to what you have to say.
Odette has things to say. She’s read Anna Karenina and Frankenstein and Kierkegaard. She could talk for hours about her Marxist interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Last year, she wrote an essay arguing Romeo and Juliet’s downfall had nothing to do with love, but with their diminishing worth in a capitalist, production-focused society. Their refusal to obey the orders of their parents and prince meant they were no longer valuable. Odette spent hours on the essay and her teacher gave her a C with the comment, this doesn’t answer the assigned prompt!
Gioia scans the occasional shopper approaching the grocery store.
“What about him?” Gioia asks, pointing at a short, floppy-haired college-aged man wearing a sweatshirt with UCSD embroidered across the front.
Gioia is good at assessing the threat level of men. Her mother has brought enough of them home for Gioia to consider herself an expert. She knows when a man is angry enough to throw a punch, and when he’s in a good enough mood to take a joke.
Odette nods, and Gioia approaches him. She runs through the pitch they’ve already tried on three men.
“We’re trying to buy some wine for a dinner party we’re going to, but we left our IDs at home and we don’t have time to go back. Would you be able to buy it for us? You’d be a lifesaver.”
The previous men laughed and shook their heads. But Gioia and Odette have done this before, and they know all it takes is for one man to agree.
“You cops?” the man asks.
“What?” Odette laughs. “Of course not. We promised our friends we’d bring wine, and we don’t want to ruin the entire evening. You could come, maybe.”
The man runs his hands through his hair.
“Okay, sure. I guess. What do you want?”
“A cabernet,” Gioia says, handing him a twenty-dollar bill.
Gioia has read enough wine bottles her mother leaves piled in the recycling bin to string together an order that makes her sound like an expert. She hands the man the twenty-dollar bill, and he disappears into the store.
When the man returns, fifteen minutes later, he pulls the bottle of wine out from one of his grocery bags and says, “So, you said there was a dinner party?”
“Yeah, but our friends just canceled. So, we’re actually going to head home now,” Gioia says, taking the wine bottle.
She slips the wine into her backpack and zips the pocket shut. Her shoe laces are double-knotted, her hand ready to reach for Odette’s if she decides it’s best for them to run.
“Oh,” the man says. “Wanna hang at my place?”
Gioia and Odette exchange glances, each daring the other to make the call; to agree to this strange man’s request and prove that, so long as they are together, nothing bad can happen to them.
“We’ll pass, but thanks for the offer,” Gioia says, and Odette sighs, grateful for Gioia’s response.
“How about your number?” he says, looking at Gioia.
“Sure,” Gioia says and shrugs. She creates a contact in his phone.
“I’m Odette,” Gioia says, and then points at Odette. “And that’s Gioia.”
“I’m Josh,” the man says.
Gioia and Odette walk across the grocery store parking lot in the opposite direction of the man. The bright light of the sunset forces their heads down to observe the concrete.
They head to the reservoir, small but mostly abandoned because of its sulfur odor. The water is thick with algae, impossible to determine what lurks beneath the surface. When they reach the reservoir, they pass the wine bottle back and forth.
“Did you really give him your number?” Odette asks.
“No,” Gioia says, and takes a sip of wine. “I gave him yours.”
Odette’s face warms. “What? Why would you do that?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Maybe not for you. Now I have to deal with him. Besides, I’m not the one he wanted.”
Odette takes a swig of wine, forcing down the bitter mouthful that tastes more like soggy wood than cherry.
Gioia leans to wrap her arm around Odette’s shoulder, but Odette turns away from her.
“That’s not true,” Gioia says. “Did you see his sweatshirt? I’d bore him. But you could give him a run for his money.”
Gioia waits for Odette to turn around. She knows she will; knows exactly what to say to comfort Odette.
“This tastes like shit,” Odette says, turning back toward Gioia. She pours the wine into the dirt and laughs.
Gioia pulls Odette into a hug. Odette’s body is warm and her hair smells like roses. Even when Odette changes shampoo, years in the future, Gioia will always remember the musky honey scent that floated like a cloud around Odette’s head, the only aroma that will remind her of home.
*
Gioia and Odette lead Trevor to the reservoir, his hands tied behind his back. Even when it’s two against one, Gioia and Odette know better than to trust a boy with two free hands.
“You don’t get to touch,” Odette says.
“Maybe if you’re good,” Gioia smiles.
Trevor nods, walking down the path as instructed while Gioia and Odette follow behind him. He will do whatever Gioia and Odette tell him. It’s why they chose him for this experiment. He’s a studious boy who sits at the front of the classroom in first period chemistry. His hand shoots into the air anytime the teacher asks a question. But more importantly, his face reveals every emotion and thought, and when Gioia accused him of staring at Odette for too long during a lab, he blushed and stammered an incoherent response.
“He’s obsessed with you,” Gioia told Odette, and Odette basked in the warmth of attention for days. She doesn’t like Trevor, but she likes to be liked.
They stop at the bottom of the path where the reservoir sits. The path stretches into a patch of dirt like a stage, with the chaparral serving as a backdrop. To the left, the reservoir is still and murky.
“You got the money?” Gioia asks.
Trevor nods and hands them $20.
Gioia goes first. She lifts her Rolling Stones t-shirt over her head and tosses it on the ground. She doesn’t listen to the band, but she likes the print—the red tongue lapping at her chest. Crumpled on the ground, the Cupid’s bow of the top lip presses against a rock, as if sucking on it. She unhooks her bra, a faded purple underwire with inch-thick padding that could hide iron nipples in the dead of winter. Gioia only now realizes that, without the illusion of her pushup bra, her breast size might disappoint Trevor.
But there’s no turning back. She’s not about to let Trevor think she’s some inexperienced loser. The bra slides down her arms, and she stands before him, topless. She watches Trevor watching her; likes the way his eyes widen, pupils dilate, and lips fidget.
Gioia smiles, nods at Odette. Odette parrots Gioia, stripping off her shirt and bra. Neither of them has made it this far with a boy before. They’ve gotten close. They met up with Josh from the grocery store a couple of weeks ago. After texting Odette half a dozen times, she worried he’d get angry if she didn’t respond. That he’d find her and hurt her. Or, worse, sigh and say, never mind when he found he was talking to Odette, not Gioia.
So, Odette agreed to hang out at his place, but only if Gioia could come. Josh had frozen margaritas ready when they arrived, and insisted they sit on either side of him on a ratty leather couch that sank in the middle. No matter how much Gioia and Odette tried to shift in their seats, they kept sliding toward Josh.
They let him kiss them, which felt electric and exciting. But his hands were rough as he grabbed at each of their bodies, gripping and pulling at their limbs like a butcher preparing an animal for slaughter. When he stood and nodded toward his bedroom, Gioia and Odette stiffened.
“Come here,” he said, his voice low and demanding.
“Give us a minute,” Gioia said.
As soon as he disappeared into his bedroom, Gioia and Odette fled the apartment. They didn’t stop running for several blocks. Odette blocked his number before he could text her some cruel thing, and they never visited the downtown grocery store again.
Now, with Trevor, Gioia and Odette stand like statues, shoulders pressed back. Trevor is nothing like Josh. Trevor is putty in their hands; the rabbit to their wolf. Josh, on the other hand, was the wolf.
The wind starts, and their nipples harden. Trevor grins.
“Can I feel them?” he asks Odette.
“Why?” Odette asks.
“Because I want to,” he says. But it almost sounds like he says “I want you.” And that’s almost the same as “I love you.”
Gioia wants him to say he loves her. Even if he doesn’t mean it. Just hearing the words, however meaningless when lumped together, would be enough.
Odette wants him to say he loves her. She knows it might not be forever, that love can mutate into hate, but she doesn’t care. “I love you,” just once, would be enough.
They untie Trevor’s hands, and stand a few feet before him. Gioia and Odette close their eyes and wait.
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