CW// racism, ableism
I snort as I look into the tiny mirror embedded in the sun visor in Colt’s old pickup truck where less than a quarter of my face can be viewed at any given time “What?” Colt asks. His eyes flick in my direction from the driver’s seat. I feel my chest soften noting the amused rise of the corner of his mouth. “I’m just imagining the little, tiny, man head that this mirror was designed for, on the averagely sized man body that the rest of the vehicle was.” He snorts in kind. “I don’t think his head was the appendage it was designed to accommodate,” he responds, revving the engine. “Know what I mean?”
“It’s actually pronounced, ‘com-pen-sate.’”
“Ah, she’s got jokes,” he says, his hand creeping thing style across the bench seat separating us. I smack it and it scurries back sadly. “Quit. I need to focus. It’s hard to create symmetry when I can’t see both sides of my face at once.”
“I don’t even know why you put that stuff on. You look good without it.”
“You’re so stupid,” I say straining not to smile.
“Whatever you say, Princess.”
“Princess? This is new. Which?”
“Jasmine, of course.”
“Of course,” I say, then, “Slow down. My eye liner is going to look like a seismograph at this rate.”
“Fine,” he says, slamming on the brakes. I catch myself before I slide into the dashboard, then silently reposition myself in my seat. “Grow. Up,” I say without looking at him.
“Wear your seat belt.”
“I’m riding with Chole next time,” I say.
“Then next time, you should be on time. I think we’d all appreciate that.” I ignore him, tucking my chin into my chest for a view of the top of my head where my hands strategically pull on the topknot of thick, black hair, looking for that perfect ratio of volume to mess. I pull the corner of my eye taught and begin to smudge black eye liner into my upper lash line. I almost jump at the sound of Jay’s voice from the back seat saying, “Will you two fuck, already?”
Before we left Colt and I had a conversation about holding my tongue when Jay is being a dick. Colt gives me a look to remind me of this conversation, but I do not heed the warning. “Only if you’re done,” I say, immediately regretting it as I look into the backseat through the mirror and see Kyla’s round cheeks flush so red they match her make-out-disheveled lips. Her grey blue eyes dart down to her hands then turn to look out the window to her left. “Jealous?” Jay asks, looking back at me with predatory eyes. I break his eye contact, moving to attend to my other eye. “Of the people that rode with Chole?” I ask, “Yes. More with every passing minute.” I exchange the black pencil for the a pink tube with a green lid and it makes a satisfying squelch as I pull the lash wand out and embed its teeth in the base of my lashes, pulling it up and through their dark tangle. I lean back for a better view of both eyes. Satisfied I drop the tube into the bag and begin pushing pencils, and tubes and compacts around its interior before plucking a gold flecked compact whose color mimics the red clay of the mountain side rising to my left. I suck my cheeks in and apply the powder in quick flicks over the prominence of my cheek bones, then move my head side to side a few times in comparison. A sweep of caramel concealer to hide the dark spots under my eyes and I’m done.
I slump dramatically back onto the seat. Colt looks over to me and mouths dra-ma-tic. My eyes roll in their sockets, but I freeze as he turns his eyes back to the road and his hand reaches casually over to mine with a playful squeeze. I feel my stomach flutter and pull my hand away too quickly, busying myself in the mirror by rolling my lips together with outsized concentration, redistributing the sheer shimmer of my gloss. Deeming the current distribution insufficient I search my bag for the tube to apply more. The tube reads, “nude,” but it’s dusty pink has a lightening effect against the rosy brown of my lips. I lift my chin knowing what I’ll find, and my eyes rest there. There’s nothing to do about the things erupting on my jaw line but to get right up to the mirror and stare at them, so I lean in. My fucking period. Why today? Why? “I got some new concealer that’s really good if you want something heavier. It has, like, a green that you apply first to counter act the redness. It really works if you…”
“Your color will not work for her color,” Jay says. Kyla stops mid-way through contorting her body to reach the bag at her feet. My eyes dart to Colt’s, and he does a dramatically deep breath in and out, like my not breathing deeply is what’s wrong with Jay. I roll my eyes and look away. It’s not like he’s wrong. I’d look unhinged with her concealer on my face. “Here…” Kyla says, making to hand the concealer to me, but Jay intercepts, making a show of reading the tube’s label. “Ah yes, see,” Jay says in a stuffy scientific voice, “this says that this color is vanilla. As you can see it does not say brown. My hypothesis is correct.”
“My skin isn’t brown,” I say without turning around.
“Awe, yes,” he goes on, still in the science voice. “It also does not say terrorist.”
“Terrorist isn’t a color, Jay,” Colt says with mild irritation.
“I don’t know, man. They get pretty creative with these make up names. How am I supposed to know?” Jay laughs, and Colt looks at me, raising his eyebrows, like, see? I got this. I can feel the pressure building in my head, but I just look out the window, doing whatever the oral equivalent of sitting on my hands, is. It’s awkwardly silent for a moment and just when I’m afraid it’ll be that way the rest of the ride, Kyla does worse.
“Oh, well, you can use whatever you want to of mine… If you want. I just got a new lipstick.”
“The red one?” J barks, like Kyla’s said something funny, and I know shit’s about to go south, fast.
“What?” Kyla asks, her voice hollowed out to receive the criticism.
“Red lipstick isn’t made for big lips,” J says like it’s the truth. “Unless you’re talking about a clown, I guess,” he adds.
I open my mouth, but Colt beats me to it. “See? You look better with less. Told you,” he says, glancing at me for a third time, in reassurance. If there’s anything I’m not, it’s reassured. It feels like all I am is one big scream. It must be clear on my face because he gives me a look like, “what?”
I turn around to face J. His eyes are closer than I anticipated with the way he has to fold his long body into the shallow back seat, but I lean in closer.
“You sure are sure that your opinion matters, aren’t you?” I ask.
“Sure are sure?” Jay responds with a laugh, but I cut him off. “Do you work for Maybelline? Like, what the fuck?”
“I was kidding.” he says.
“You always are.”
“Someone’s on the rag,” Jay says.
“Jay…” Kyla says quietly, her silence implication and placation at once.
“Fuck, man. It’s a joke Kyla,” Jay drawls, “You’re so dumb sometimes.” Kyla looks away pretending to be interested in something out the window. I can see her chin dimpling with the effort of not crying.
“If dumb is what we’re calling not caring for your, ‘jokes,’ then I’ll take the short bus,” I say.
“She knows I’m kidding. She can take a joke unlike some people I know,” he says smiling like there’s not a thing in his life he’s ever not gotten away with. He wears it like a badge, but I see it differently. The things he’s gotten away with recently are at the heart of this feud. I hold his gaze. He’s a boy-kind-of-pretty, symmetrical and sharp with a cascade of freckles to soften it all. I search his face for any evidence of the person I used to know but I can’t find him there. It makes me wonder if I ever really knew him. If the-him he was with me ever existed, or not. We were never as close as Colt and I are, but he was so easy to be around. He’s the kind of person that everyone thinks they’re closer with than they were. Funny, and charismatic and just out of reach.
I turn around and sit back down, my eyes still on him in the visor mirror. I watch the momentary confusion in his eyes as he tries to push his dark hair back and finds an immovable crew cut where he’s used to having a wave of dark brown hair. Searching for something else to do with his hand, he wraps it around Kyla. I look away from the mirror in embarrassment for her.
“What’s wrong?” I hear him whisper into her ear, and a moment later the sound of the faux leather bench seat squeaking as she shifts into him. She’s dumb alright, but not because of anything she lacks in humor. I look back into the mirror at her and she tucks her breaking-off-blonde hair behind her ear nervously when our eyes meet. I just snap the visor shut and look out the wind shield as Colt narrowly avoids sliding into a huge rut in the deteriorating dirt road.
“You, ok?” Colt asks without looking at me. “Fine,” I reply.
“Talk about it later?” he asks, and I nod. He slides his hand across the seat, once more, to rest on top of mine. This time when I pull my hand away, it is with intention, but I regret it almost immediately. When I look over, he returns the look. I narrow my eyes and slide my had back under his. A familiar warmth spreads through me. How can so little, make me forget so quickly? One look from him and I am completely full; satiated by how the sunburnt-light ends of his sandy, overgrown hair licks around his ear and the fullness of his chapped lips. Even when I look away, the arc of his long dark eye lashes opening and closing preoccupies me, playing on loop in my head. I close my eyes to stop the fixation, but then I can only see his eyes, their green deepening as it reaches the gold flecked perimeter of the pupil. Pathetic.
I whip around in my seat, so that I’m situated in the center of the bench on my knees and facing J and Ky. “Who wants to pregaaame?” I ask.
“See, this is the Lili we know and love,” Jay says.
“Not you,” I say, tipping the flask up into my mouth and handing it to Kyla after a few glugs.
“What?” Jay asks looking genuinely offended.
“Oh, did I hurt your feelers, babe?” I reply.
“You’re rude.”
“I’m rude?” I say in disbelief. He nods and I reach my hand over to him to scratch under his chin. “Good boy. Be quiet.”
“Fuck off,” he says swatting my hand away and snatching the flask from Kyla.
“Bad Jay! Don’t make me get out the bark collar!”
“Play nice,” says Colt, a reprimand thinly wrapped in the play. Jay takes a swig, staring daggers at me. As he brings the flask back down, I push it back up saying, “Uh-uh, there you go,” and the amber liquid begins to pour into his mouth once more. Colt elbows me softly and I look at him. “What?” I ask venomously, but he just shakes his head and looks back at the road, slowing when the back end of the truck begins to fish tail. “Fine,” I say, snatching the flask out of Jay’s hand before turning to sit back down. I pull my legs into my chest, wrap my arms around them and lean into the passenger door making every effort to keep myself as inaccessible as possible. There will be no platonic hands or glances available for my fanciful interpretation, at least not until I get something mind-altering in my system.
“I’m leaving in a week,” I remind myself, still straddling the line between excitement and nausea at the thought. Colt doesn’t know, and in moments like this one, I’m tempted to bash him over the head with it. I don’t.
I’d opted to start classes early so that I’d be on campus to train in advance of the cross-country season in the fall. At least that’s why I’d said I’d done it, but that was only part of it. The other part was that I wanted to have the upper hand. For fucking once. I wanted to be the one to leave this time. I wanted to be the one with better things to do and a bomb in my back pocket that I could drop when I pleased.
I stare out the window, Aspen trunks whipping by as we move. For a while I try to focus, to really try to see the individual leaves on the trees. Their veins and heart shaped faces flash past, and I only see one in a hundred. “Couldn’t see the forest for the leaves,” I say into the wind. Story of my life. I feel like I’m always seeing the wrong things and missing the right ones. So, what am I missing now? The answer hits me like a tranquilizer, softening all of me at once. This is temporary, I realize. This is temporary and none of it matters. It never has. Mom’s been telling me that my whole life. It always seemed like she was imparting wisdom, but it was more of a prophecy. She knew I’d get here. She was letting me know that I would so that once I did, I’d know where I was.
Whether Colt gives me a high five or dissolves into tears when I tell him I’m leaving, this part of my life will be over. I feel light, tall. I let out a heavy sigh, and I can feel Colt’s eyes on me, but I don’t care. I really don’t.
Soon the endless switch backs are behind us. The road straightens out and the grade decreases gradually. Before I know it, we’re there. The truck grinds to a halt as the forest opens up into a clearing. The dirt cloud we’d evaded in motion catches up with us at rest and floats in the windows, red and stifling. I cough dryly and spin the hand crank fast to roll up the window. Colt rolls his up too. I move to open the door and climb out so Jay can pop my seat forward and do the same, but Colt’s hand finds my knee and pulls it toward him. I scoot in his direction, narrowly avoiding being smacked by the seat as it pounces forward at Jay’s impatient hand. He squeezes through the space between door frame and seat like a sloth, all arms and legs. It’s so awkward for him that I’d laugh if he didn’t piss me off so much. Kyla follows him out and turns back to ask, “you want this closed or… oh, ok,” she says, seeing Colt’s hand on my knee and pushing the door closed on rusty hinges.
I survey the scene before me in feigned interest, ignoring the cloying silence and Colt’s pleading eyes. Aspen trees define three sides of the clearing and the dirt road the other. Where the tree line started last I was here, the ground is now dappled with tree stumps. There are a few people already clustered in little groups of three or four. Girls sit in camp chairs around a mounting would-be bonfire wearing distressed jeans and tight t-shirts. Shirtless guys come and go from the tree line, adding dry branches to the wood pile. Some other guys sit on a tail gate, still wearing their graduation hats with cigarettes between their fingers, and legs swinging below them. I can hear the four-wheeler before I can see it and Chole rounds the bend of a path a moment later, a cloud of dirt in his wake and a wide smile on his face. He waves at us before disappearing again into the trees. “What’s uuup,” Jay yells to no in particular. He walks toward the wood pile, raising his hands looking more like a gladiator marching into a colosseum than someone arriving at a graduation party just in time to be way too drunk when it actually begins. “Sup?” says Kay, raising her beer to Jay. Her poor horse. She probably weighs as much as he does by now.
When I can’t reasonably be silent any longer, I offer a clipped, “what?” but I already know what. I’d known the whole time. “You know how Jay gets when he drinks too much. Last time, with him and Sierra… he almost got in sooo much trouble,” he responds.
“Well, maybe he should have.”
“Yeah, maybe, but do you want that to happen to someone else? To you? We gotta have each other’s backs,” he says. My blood turns molten.
“I think Jay has enough people’s backs for all of us. Likes to sneak up from behind is what I heard. And if he ever tries something like that with me, you’ll have to follow a 500 foot trail or however long they are, of his intestines to find the rest of him.”
“Jesus Lil, graphic much? What’s your problem? He’s still our friend.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I’m just saying, don’t push him. He’s…”
“Cooooolt,” a girl’s voice yells at an irritatingly high octave. Colt turns his head to look out the window. I swear his body slumps for a moment in disappointment. I don’t have to look to know what’s coming, but I do and make a gagging noise as I take in Marcy’s form skipping toward us. What an idiot. “Better let you go,” I say. I scoot toward the passenger door, yanking its handle before kicking it open, then slam it shut behind me so hard that it makes a clunking noise when it slams shut. I hope it’s broken. I hear Colt’s muffled voice yell, “Lili,” and I stop for a moment, for effect, before turning around, but then he’s turned away. Marcy has already opened his door, her tippy-toed feet visible under the truck. Bitch.
ns 15.158.61.46da2
