The Pretty Ones Page 3

  And yet, despite his secret rendezvous with . . . whomever, Barrett was the one who told her to stay away from others, to not get too close to anyone, to forget the idea of having friends and going out. Those things were for other people. People who smoked cigarettes on their lunch break and had sex in building entryways. People who weren’t like them—or at least not like her. He wrote long manifestos that he’d leave on her desk while she slept. Letters that, at times, spanned half a dozen pages. The world is poison—a lion waiting to devour innocence, a whore itching to spread her disease.

  Poetic.

  Hypocritical.

  Because despite his insistence that she stay in, he’d run off somewhere and do God only knew what. It seemed that his advice only applied to Nell, while he was free to do as he chose. It was enough to get the anxiety roiling around in her gut, the sizzle of another migraine popping behind the nerves of her eyes. If she continued to follow Barrett’s rules and Barrett continued to do his own thing, Nell would be left to fend for herself. It was as though he wanted her to be alone.

  Make the life you want.

  Nell frowned down at the keys of her typewriter. She couldn’t just sit back and let her world unravel. If Barrett left, if for some reason, one night, he didn’t come back, she would be the one to lose everything. Her brother. Her only friend. Her mind. With no one to talk to, no one to run to, she’d scream herself into an early coffin, cut her own throat—no, cut her own heart out, put herself down.

  If Barrett disappeared, Nell would have no one.

  Even their own mother was a ghost, despite being very much alive.

  Faye Sullivan was living somewhere in New Jersey. Nell guessed she was maybe only a mile or two from where she and Barrett had grown up as kids. But the last time their mother had moved, Barrett had burned the scrap of paper on which she’d written her new address. He had smirked as her phone number smoldered above the stove’s gas burner and left the ashes he’d smeared across the walls for Nell to clean. Their mother was perhaps little more than an hour-long train ride away, but to them she was lost, because Nell had allowed it. She’d let their mother slip out of their lives in exchange for the love of her brother. It had been years since they had heard anything from Faye, and in those years, Barrett was happier than he’d ever been. Without her, Barrett could be himself.

  But without their mother, and without Barrett, Nell was an island. Brooklyn was dangerous. If something happened to him, if someone . . .

  She squeezed her eyes shut against the thought. Against the pain.

  Don’t even think it. If you think it, it may come true.

  If Nell only had a friend, just one friend beyond her brother’s company, things would be different. She had to kill her loneliness before it made her disappear.

  She glanced up from her desk as Lamont skirted the call-center floor. Lamont was the mother hen, keeping her chicks in line. She was taking mental notes of who was doing what, separating the star players from the ones that could be let go the next time layoffs came around. Nell caught her boss’s eye, and Lamont gave her a slight nod, a go on, as though wanting to see if Nell had the ambition—the guts to take her advice.

  I’ve got the guts, she thought. Anything Barrett can do, I can do better. A lie if there ever was one, but if it gave her a momentary spark of motivation, she’d make herself believe it.

  Pushing her mousy brown hair behind her ears, she squared her shoulders and rose from her desk. She would show Lamont that she was different, that her supervisor hadn’t made a mistake in giving her a second chance. Grabbing her Mr. Topsy-Turvy mug off her desk, she headed back to the break room for a fresh cup of coffee, heading straight for Mary Ann Thomas and her crew of pretty friends. Adriana Esposito was there, flanked by Savannah Wheeler and Miriam Gould.

  Mary Ann was leaning against the break-room counter, picking colored sprinkles off a pink-frosted doughnut with manicured nails. She gingerly placed one sprinkle after the other onto her tongue as she chatted with her girlfriends. A sexy move. Way too sexy for the workplace.

  Slut.

  But as soon as Nell came within earshot, their airy giggles transformed into murmurs. Mary Ann made eye contact, and despite Nell’s nerves, Nell forced a smile and dared to speak.

  “Hi,” she said. As soon as the single syllable left her throat, Mary Ann looked to her friends and twisted her face up in grossed-out bemusement.

  The whale, it speaks!

  Nell caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked away from them.

  Both Adriana and Miriam had been brunettes up until a few weeks ago, just like Mary Ann. But a few days after Mary Ann had bleached her chestnut hair nearly white, Adriana came back a redhead. Miriam chopped off her long, dark hair into a sleek, angular, redheaded bob. Now, half of the office was either a bottle blonde or had cut their hair in an attempt to squelch their fears of being shot dead on the street.

  Nell was one of the last girls to sport the Son of Sam’s favorite hairstyle—long and dark. Sometimes she wished he’d come. Maybe, rather than killing her, they’d fall in love and run away together instead. Maybe, if he loved her enough, she wouldn’t even ask him to stop. She’d help him pick out his victims, pinpoint girls who looked a little too confident, a little too bitchy, a little too much like the type of girl that made her life a living hell.

  Nell cleared her throat. She forced her gaze toward the girls again. “I was wondering . . .” Her words came out stammered, sticking to the back of her throat.

  “About why you’re so sweaty?” Mary Ann arched a skeptical eyebrow.

  Miriam and Adriana tittered beneath their breaths.

  “Yeah,” Mary Ann said flatly. “We were wondering about that too.”

  “Um, about your hair?” Nell ignored the jab. The mention of Mary Ann’s locks made the bottle blonde’s expression harden to flat-out defensive. She shoved a handful of curls behind her left shoulder, exposing more of the embroidered collar that rimmed her billowing peasant blouse.

  “I was just wondering how you did it,” Nell clarified. “What you used, I mean. I was thinking that maybe, because of the scare . . .” Her words trailed off as Mary Ann’s guarded expression eased into a false grin. Nell looked away again, splashed some coffee into her mug to busy her hands.

  Mary Ann exhaled a quiet laugh. “The scare?” she asked. “Trust me, Nell, if anyone has nothing to be afraid of, it’s you.”

  Nell swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat.

  Bitch.

  Adriana and Miriam snickered at their leader’s witty quip.

  Savannah stood with her head bowed, avoiding eye contact. “Jesus, Mary,” she murmured.

  “. . . and Joseph,” Adriana tacked on—a shared joke, for sure.

  Suddenly bored with her dessert, Mary Ann dropped the doughnut back into the box of pastries and shouldered her way out of the break room with a scoff. Savannah followed, but Adriana stalled her and Miriam’s departure by nudging Nell with her arm as she passed. Coffee splashed out of Nell’s mug. It sloshed onto her sweater sleeve, down the front of her blouse, across the lap of her slacks.

  Nell gasped and took a backward step only to crash into the break-room counter. More coffee sloshed over the rim of her cup, scorching her hand, dulling the burn that was blooming along her stomach and thighs. Adriana pulled her face into a look of surprise, but it shifted into a full-on laugh when Miriam exhaled a dramatic “Uh-oh!” They skittered out the door, nearly knocking over Linnie Carter amid their schadenfreude.

  Linnie was one of the different ones. She was a short, somewhat homely girl compared to the fashion models who stomped the call-center floor. But that didn’t make any difference. Nell didn’t dare look at her, regardless. Embarrassed, she turned away from the break-room door to keep Linnie from seeing the wet stain that now soiled her entire front.

  Idiot, she thought. Y
ou’re so stupid, thinking you could talk to Mary Ann. Thinking that you’re good enough. You deserve it. You deserve it. You deserve it!

  Her bottom lip quivered. She struggled to keep her composure, her stomach balling itself into a fist. People would stare at her dirty clothes on the train. The bicycle gang at her stop would use it as ammunition.

  Hey, bibliotecaria! Next time, maybe try to swallow!

  Nell shut her eyes.

  Hey, Blanca!

  She squeezed them tight.

  Hey, Nell!

  She was so stupid. Stupid to think that she could change her life. That she could be something she wasn’t.

  The headache that lingered at the back of her brain speared her through with a sudden jolt. Concentrated brain freeze. She grasped the break-room counter, gritted her teeth to dampen the pain.

  “Hey, um . . . Nell?”

  She jumped when a hand brushed her shoulder. Linnie snatched her fingers away and held them against her chest, as if escaping a bite.

  “I’m sorry, I just . . .” Linnie blinked a pair of wide-set eyes. Her face lacked symmetry, as though she had been created by Van Gogh rather than God. And yet, despite her inability to compete in looks with the likes of Mary Ann or her friends, Linnie Carter wasn’t an outsider. She smoked menthols on the sidewalk while watching taxicabs buzz by. She laughed and socialized by the water cooler with coworkers, all of them thin and tall, with glossy curls in their hair. They weren’t the pretty ones, but they knew what to wear, what to say. Somehow, they still managed to fit in. Ugly ducklings disguised as swans.

  “Are you okay? Your clothes, you . . .”

  Nell twisted away from her, the throb in her brain still going strong. She didn’t need fake sympathy.

  And what was she supposed to do about her clothes? Ask Lamont for the rest of the day off after arriving late? No. Nell would be forced to endure another four hours at her desk, wearing that coffee stain the way Hester Prynne wore a scarlet letter. L for loser. O for outcast. An N, like her name, but rather than standing for Nell, that N would stand for Nothing. Nothing Sullivan.

  “Hey . . . I’m just trying to help,” Linnie said from behind Nell’s shoulder.

  “Help.” Nell croaked out the word. Like anyone would ever help her.

  Except sometimes people do help, the second voice inside her reasoned. The kinder voice, the optimist that occasionally drowned out her self-disdain. What about Lamont? What about your second chance?

  “Here.” Linnie held out a wad of napkins in a fisted hand. “I’ll run across the street to the deli, get some seltzer water.” Nell slowly turned toward the extended arm, then eyed the girl it was attached to. Linnie gave her a pitying, crooked smile. “My mom swears by seltzer water for any stain.”

  Mom.

  “That and lemon juice. Maybe they’ll have some of that too, but I don’t know.”

  Nell took the napkins, still unsure of Linnie’s intentions. ­“Really?” The question was one referring to Linnie’s kindness, to the fact that Linnie was willing to run across the street just to help Nell out. But Linnie mistook the question.

  “My mom used to work for a dry cleaner.”

  Mom.

  “I’ll meet you in the bathroom,” Linnie said. “Back in a flash.”

  Nell stuck close to the wall as she made her way to the restroom, trying with all her might to blend in against a stark beige wall. She held her arms across her front in awkward angles, tugging at her sweater hard enough to make the weave creak. Attempting to hide the wet spot that stretched from the top of her bra down to her crotch, she was suddenly sick with a memory: Barrett hiding from their mother after having an accident at school.

  Her brother had been six years old. Gathered with his class on the floor, they were seated in a carpeted area of the classroom for story time. It seemed like an abnormally long story that afternoon, and Barrett needed to pee. But it was an inopportune moment to raise his hand. He’d interrupt the whole class, all to embarrass himself by asking permission to use the little boy’s room. His friends would gape at him. They’d laugh.

  He tried to hold it.

  The story dragged on.

  His teacher’s tempo slowed to maybe one or two words a minute. One sentence per hour. One page per day.

  Barrett held his breath.

  Clamped his teeth.

  Nearly gasped when warmth enveloped him from the waist down, only to grow cold and wet seconds later.

  After story time ended, he shimmied back to his desk along the wall just as Nell was doing now, ignoring the teacher’s questions to the class about the wet spot on the floor. He spent the rest of the day thinking up an elaborate excuse for why his overalls were soaked. During recess, he “accidentally” tripped and fell into a rain puddle—a perfect cover. But it was an excuse that hadn’t worked on their mom. No excuse ever did. As soon as she saw him, she’d twisted both his and Nell’s arms behind their backs and marched them outside, where she barked:

  Filthy pig.

  Stupid kid.

  She sprayed them with the hard jet of the garden hose to wash away the stink. It was just after Halloween. Cold. Windy. They nearly froze where they stood. Anytime Barrett did something wrong, Nell got punished for it right along with him. Anytime she did something wrong, their mother would spare Barrett the rod. That was just the way things were.

  Nell didn’t look up as she crossed what seemed like a mile of office space between the break room and the bathroom. But she could feel eyes crawling across her skin. No doubt that Mary Ann and her gang were biting back Cheshire Cat–grins. Nell imagined herself above her shoddy little apartment stove, a pot of water bubbling to a boil. And there, tied to her red diner-style table, would be Mary Ann, Adriana, Miriam, and Savannah. They’d blubber instead of giggle, their pretty faces swollen with tears, ugly from all the crying. Their knees would be raw and bloody from hours of kneeling on grains of uncooked Uncle Ben’s rice. They’d look at her with pleading eyes.

  Please, Nell, let us go.

  Please, Nell, we love you so.

  But it would be too late. Too goddamn late. Nell would stick her hands into a pair of oven gloves. Pluck the pot of boiling water from the stove. And with a pirouette as graceful as Eva Evdokimova’s, she’d spin around and splash the water out of the pot in a ribbon of liquid and steam. They’d scream. Their flesh would turn to soft wax. She’d pry their mouths open with kitchen tongs and pour liquid fire down their throats, scorch their faces, and, with her bare fingers, peel back their blistered skin.

  Nell ducked into the office bathroom, blinked at herself in the mirror. The polyester blouse she’d plucked off the JCPenney sale rack was ruined, but whatever. She hadn’t liked it much anyway. Her sweater, however, was a different matter. The right sleeve of her cardigan was soaked. It was doubtful she’d ever manage to get the stain out.

  Stupid cow.

  Her skin burned beneath the wet blotch that had grown cold and a deeper shade of brown. It was almost pretty, like drying blood.

  A few minutes passed before Linnie returned with a bottle of seltzer water in hand. “They didn’t have lemon juice,” she said, breathless and red-cheeked from her run across the street. “But this should help at least.” She tore a handful of paper towels from the roll on the bathroom counter and soaked them in water that fizzed against the white porcelain sink. Nell watched wordlessly as Linnie began to blot the hem of her shirt, ignoring the wool weave of her sweater to focus on cheap polyester instead. When Linnie leaned in close, Nell breathed deep, inhaling the shampoo scent of her hair. She wondered if Linnie had a boyfriend; if, outside of the office, she was more dangerous than demure. Nell imagined her gasping in the shadowed stairwell of a decrepit apartment building, her face twisted in a mask of lust as she huffed Nell, oh Nell . . . oh Nellett . . . oh Barrett, yes.

  “You know . . .”
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  Snap.

  Nell could just about hear the sizzle of her own nerves.

  Linnie paused, as if disturbed by Nell’s dazed expression, then cleared her throat and looked back down to the hem of Nell’s shirt. “You know,” she repeated, her voice soft, her eyes averted, “you shouldn’t let them treat you like that. They think they’re pretty great, but it isn’t right, the way they act. That Mary Ann . . . she’s a bully. They all are.”

  Nell worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Barrett had teased her about that very thing once. Lucky you don’t wear lipstick, sis, or you’d wolf down half a tube every day before lunch. Linnie wore lipstick, her mouth frosted pale pink, reminiscent of Mary Ann’s forgotten doughnut. If Barrett had the chance, would he run off with a girl like Linnie Carter? Would he leave Nell behind for the girl with a cotton-candy mouth and a cubist face?

  “Do they bully you?” Nell asked. Linnie glanced up, seemingly surprised by the question, then shook her head in the negative.

  “No, but I don’t think they’d bully you either if you stood up for yourself. It’s a matter of self-respect.”

  Nell glanced down to the bit of polyester held between Linnie’s fingers. She reached out, allowing her hand to brush against her newfound friend’s. That’s what Linnie was now. A friend. It hadn’t been what Nell had intended, but somehow, in some way, her plan to change her future had worked, and it hadn’t even been that hard.

  Nell leaned in. She wanted to thank her new friend for her help, to brush her lips across Linnie’s cheek. I’ll never forget this . . .

  But Linnie pulled away.

  She cleared her throat. Flashed a nervous smile. Offered Nell the wad of wet paper towels, suddenly uninterested in offering her help.

  “Anyway, just keep patting at it until it comes out.” An uncomfortable pause. “I should get back to my desk before someone notices I’m gone.”

  Nell took the towels. She was ready to speak, to thank Linnie for her kindness, but before she could say a word, Linnie fled the bathroom quick as a thief.